In fishing, you’re never out of it

I’m not really out of it. That’s what I keep thinking now that I’m back home pouring jig heads in the garage. Every year, I pour a couple hundred of these things, and I’m on day two of dodging hot lead and resetting springs and dropping things on my feet sometimes, but that’s cool. My jig heads are awesome, and it’s worth the work to get them right, even if pouring them is frustrating sometimes.

That’s kind of how I feel about the season right now. February was frustrating. I’d love to have a redo for the entire month, but in fishing you have to stay positive. In fishing, you’re never really out of it. You can always win the next one, or the next one, and you can always get back in the mix.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Bassmaster Elite Series guy or a local tournament guy, when a season isn’t going the way you want it to, you can always look forward to the next weigh-in. Right now, the next tournament is the GEICO Bassmaster Classic, and man, a win there would be awesome. Everyone knows it’s something I haven’t done before, but to me that doesn’t make a difference. It’s the next weigh-in, and in fishing — you always have a chance.

So when I stop pouring these jig heads, I’ll take a few weeks to do some fun fishing, spend some time with my family and — most importantly — get focused on Houston. I already know one of the things I need to do to win it: I have to trust my instincts.

There were times during the first two tournaments that I didn’t always do that. At Okeechobee, I kept wandering around the outside of the pack, where I knew fish were at. Up there, guys would get in line and fish the same spots over and over again. You’d see three or four guys fish a spot or a bed where we all knew a fish would be at some point. They wouldn’t catch anything, but an hour later, someone would wander over there and land a 4-pounder.

I thought about going up there and getting in the rotation on a couple of spots like that. It was only 50 or 100 yards away, in most cases, from where I was fishing, but I second-guessed myself. I knew fish would be there, but I also thought I could find a hidden batch of fish in some off-the-beaten-path kind of place. That’s kind of part of my personality, and I wasn’t the only guy doing it. A couple of other well-known Elite pros were trying to do the same, and it didn’t work out for them either.

I knew the fish were up there though. In the middle of the tournament, they switched from prespawn to spawn and went up shallower than I was. By the time I got back on the bite, I ran out of time.

That’s how fast it goes. And I bet a lot of you guys have similar tournament stories.

But that gets back to the real point, and the thought that keeps going through my head even when one of these mold pours doesn’t turn out quite right: In fishing, you can always try again. There’s always one more pour, and there’s always one more weigh-in, as long as you keep trying.