I like roller coaster rides in amusement parks, but not roller coaster rides in my fishing career. And this season has been a pure roller coaster ride so far.
I started near the top with a seventh in the Classic at Hartwell then I raced downhill at Sabine with an 88th place finish. I climbed back up at Guntersville with a 13th and then dipped back down to 61st at Sacramento. Just when I thought the coaster was going to soar back up at Havasu – a lake that’s near and dear to my heart – the bottom fell out and I free-fell straight down to 107th. I experienced zero gravity and zero points at the same time – talk about your stomach jumping into your throat.
Then I went to the crest again at Kentucky Lake with a third place and then nosedived back down to 92nd at the St. Lawrence.
Are you sick yet? Believe me, I am. Those up-and-down finishes give me nausea and have gotten me nowhere in the points. Consistency is king if you want to go to the Bassmaster Classic, and I’ve had none of that this season.
How do you avoid those gravity-defying drops in fishing performance? I wish I knew.
I do know after my two high points this season – Guntersville and Kentucky Lake – the only thing I wanted to do was get in the truck and drive straight to another tournament to stay on the up-and-up. It’s kind of like that old saying: You’ve got to make hay while the sun is shining.
Confidence and momentum are such lethal players in this sport. At the Elite level we all have the best equipment and all of our fishing skills are top grade. At this level, success boils down to confidence and momentum and once you get those rolling, you want to fish as many tournaments as possible right then. When there is a long break before the next event, you can kind of feel your momentum slip from under you and the coaster starts heading downhill.
I used to fish a lot during the breaks to try to preserve that groove between events, but it just doesn’t work. There is something about the true tournament hours and real-time competition that drives you into another place where you get into an instinctual survival mode. There is no time for second-guessing or self-doubt. Decision-making becomes elemental and gut feelings emerge. Once you start acting on these gut instincts and they’re successful, you gain that critical confidence that is so deadly in tournaments. That groove can last through three or four events in row, but it takes that pressure-cooker atmosphere to keep it simmering.
In 2014 I fished both the Bassmaster Elite Series and the FLW Tour in the same season. I’m not going to lie, it was a brutal schedule to keep pace with. But the irony of it was, I had two terrific runs during that season and solid consistency. During that same year, Greg Hackney and Casey Ashley also fished both tours and went on some pretty impressive tears as well. And who can forget Jason Christie’s three national wins in 2013 across two tours?
I’m convinced there is something about fishing multiple tournaments in a row that brings out the best in anglers. Practice to tournament to practice to tournament to practice to tournament really pares fishing down to just raw talent.
Leaving one successful event and heading to another gives you a solid starting point at the next practice round. Even if the lakes are several hundred miles apart, there are successful elements from the last event that you can play off of going into the next event – not hearsay, not dock talk, not what happened three years ago – but what’s happening right now based on what just happened 300 miles away.
The whole process feeds off itself to keep the coaster climbing. It’s like a mad scramble to get to the next event to avoid a nosedive into the bottom of the tracks. I’ve got to find a way to smooth out those gravity-defying dips. Roller coasters rock – just not in my fishing life!