Tournament fishing is all about decisions. You have to be able to make them, but when you make the wrong ones, things can go downhill in a hurry.
That’s how it was for me at the Bassmaster Elite Series opener on the Sabine River.
The tournament actually went like my practice went. I practiced the first day in Taylor’s and the second and third days in the Calcassieu River. My second day of practice was, by far, the best and that’s why I returned to there on the third day.
What was difficult in this tournament was that I knew where others had been successful in the past, so I chose not to go into those areas because I felt like a lot of people would go in there. I think I paid for it because I tried to find my own little deal, and it didn’t work out for me.
Like we all knew going in, the Sabine River is a huge fishery and you just have to pick a direction and commit to the run. In my case, I never made a cast closer than 50 miles from takeoff.
I stayed in the Calcassieu and targeted spawning areas like canals and bays and anything off the main river. I think a lot of us felt like the fish were spawning and tried to target the usual habitat – cypress trees, boat docks and anything those fish would spawn around.
The problem wasn’t getting bites; for me, it was getting good ones. You’d work and go 30 minutes without a bite, and then you’d catch one and it would be 13 inches long.
That kind of thing works on you. You work and you work and you work to finally get a bite and whenever you do, it’s a non-keeper. Either I wasn’t in the right areas, or I wasn’t doing something right.
Adding to the challenge were the two- to 2 1/2-hour fog delays on the first and second days. But all the other guys dealt with the same thing.
I didn’t feel like I didn’t have a little area where I could pull in and catch them. I was just going to have to fish hard and hopefully come across five a day. It just didn’t happen for me.
Throughout the tournament, I flipped a YUM Bad Mama and a Christie Craw and threw a Booyah spinnerbait. I was getting bites, so it was hard to switch. There were just, for the most part, small.
When you’re making a 60-mile one way run and you lose two to 2 1/2 hours a day in fog, it’s hard to make any changes throughout the day. You kind of have to go with you have confidence in.
Those were the baits I had confidence in. I just never came across a big one.
When I was driving home from Orange, Texas, I was thinking “What would I do differently?” But I really don’t think there was anything I would have done differently, except maybe go to a different area.
I felt like I was doing the right thing. I was fishing the same way a lot of the guys were fishing. Maybe I was just in the wrong area. Maybe I should have spent my second and third practice days in Taylor's.
But it’s easy to critique yourself after an event, but when you’re in the middle of it, you do what you think is right and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s tough but I like a challenging event like the Sabine River or last year when we went to New Jersey. I like those types of events; it’s just that the Sabine didn’t work out for me.
Going forward in the Elite season, I’m just going to take it one event at a time. The next event is at Lake Guntersville, and that’s going to be a challenging event because it’s going to be the exact opposite of the Sabine River event.
Guntersville is full of big bass, but that’s a two-edged sword. This is a place where you can go out and catch 22 pounds the first day and you’re patting yourself on the back, but you come in and you’re in about 40th place. It’s hard to know what’s going to be caught.
About the only way you’ll be safe is to come in with 30 pounds and that’s not the easiest thing to do. There’s going to be a lot of fish caught – there’s going to be a lot of big fish caught. A guy’s going to have to catch a couple of 7- to 8-pounders to separate himself from everybody else.
At this next event, we’re going to go from a grinder to a slugfest, and I just need to get back on track.