CARET, Va. – The ducks were two little specks winging their way along the edge of the Rappahannock River.
The casual observer probably would never have picked them out. But to the line of duck hunters hiding in a blind on the edge of an icy duck pond, they stood out like beacons on the horizon.
“There’s a pair, Jacob,’’ a broken chorus of voices half whispered, half blurted at their guide.
Jacob Powroznik leaned around the corner of the blind searching the skies and replied dryly, “Well let’s give them a little toot then.”
A series of mallard quacks later and the ducks were winging their way toward the blind. Within moments another pair followed, and out of nowhere ducks from all four directions were circling high. Powroznik quacked and chuckled at the mallards, then easily switched to beeps for gadwalls joining in, occasionally whistling and peeping to the widgeon and pintail coming late to the parade. A quad of Canada geese across the pond had him switch to clucking and cackling as he worked to coax the big black birds closer.
As the Canada geese moved closer, groups of three and four separate pods of gadwalls and widgeon were cascading out of the air, twisting and turning their wings in dips and falls that would have been mesmerizing if not for the cacophony of music playing from the lips and calls of Powroznik.
Powroznik was a one-man symphony of noises and every bird in the area was dancing to his music. It was working just the way he orchestrated it.
If things continue to work in this manner, Powroznik could be your next Bassmaster Classic Champion.
Soak on that a moment; it’s not a typo or misprint.
Jacob Powroznik, 36, is regarded as one of the most-talented, up-and-coming anglers on the Bassmaster Elite Series.
“There are very, very few anglers whose game is so complete,’’ said Mark Zona, host of the Bassmaster TV show and Zona’s Awesome Fishing Show. Powroznik was a recent guest on the show, where the two switched from smallmouth fishing to flipping docks for largemouth.
“If you look at Powroznik’s fishing; he’s just as good a smallmouth master as he is at sight fishing for big largemouth, as he is fishing with his electronics and doing every element of the game. I’ve yet to find a tournament where there’s not something that doesn’t set up for him.
“He’s so diverse – the kind of angler that only comes around once every 10 years or more. Before he came on the scene, we were told that this guy was a first-round, first-pick draft choice.”
In that vernacular, Powroznik didn’t disappoint. The guy Dave Mercer refers to as ‘J-Pow’ (his friends in Virginia call him ‘Prozzy’) quietly slipped into the Elite Series in 2014 as a rookie. He made noise by winning the Evan Williams Bourbon Bassmaster Elite at Toledo Bend midway through that season, and he followed that up with a leading weight in the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship to walk away with Rookie of the Year title.
At the 2015 Classic, Powroznik finished in fifth place, a position some pundits believe was hurt by the Day 1 fog delay. In each of the next two days, Powroznik would dominate the event during the first two hours.
“It’s easy to look at those standings and say without that fog delay, Powroznik has a very different Classic,” Zona said.
His presence at the top of the standings in those events tells only part of the story. Since joining the Elite Series, the affable angler with the Ralph Kramden charisma has missed the money only twice in his two seasons, finishing fifth in the Toyota Angler of the Year standings last season.
“If you look at the variety of places we go, the variety of conditions we fish, it’s obvious there are no holes in his game,” Zona said. “The only guy you can compare him to is Aaron (Martens).”
Zona is quick to point out with Powroznik, “there’s nothing flashy, nothing shiny, just a complete and solid angler.” The lack of flash, surrounding a cherub face that is quick to smile and tell a one-liner, has made him a favorite on the Elite Series.
You seldom see Powroznik sitting by himself. The magnetism that ducks and geese find in his calls carries over to the anglers in an undersold charismatic nature, and then to the fish with his versatile approach.
For Powroznik, competing on the Elite Series and spending his offseason as a duck and goose guide satisfies his lifelong dream of being in the outdoors every day and making a living from it.
He still remembers sitting next to his father at the age of 6, riding home from an evening of fishing and pronouncing, “When I grow up I want to be a professional fisherman!”
David Powroznik, his father, would give him a look and simply say, “Well, all right. If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it.”
His father was a lifelong hunter and fisherman and a close friend of Woo Daves. When the Classic was held on the James River, Powroznik and son would spend every evening before the competitions with Daves. And when Daves won the Classic 10 years later, the Powrozniks were there for the welcome-home party.
The family was close enough to professional angling that a career didn’t seem all that far-fetched for a young kid wanting to chase that dream.
After school, Powroznik was dropped off at local pond (only if his homework was done, a situation where Jacob said he would often stretch the truth). His father would pick him up at dark. When duck and goose season would come in, Powroznik would get to miss school for the opener. Outside of a brick and mortar school building, Powroznik would further his outdoors education in ways he would never dream possible until decades later.
Powroznik regards this annual exercise of calling to and hunting waterfowl in the Atlantic Flyway as a big part of his success in professional bass fishing.
Its impact comes in an unusual way.
“I think the more you think about fishing, the more your mind gets set on preconceived notions. For instance, you like to throw a jig, so you’re thinking about throwing a jig all the time. And you’re thinking about how you’re going to catch one on a jig, but when you get to a place and they’re not biting a jig, then you are stuck. So that’s why I just want to sit back, hunt the whole time, and then when it comes to fishing season, jump right in it.”
Powroznik’s approach is twofold in that regard. Standing knee deep in a pond of water, surrounded by 5 inches of leftover snow from winter storm Jonas and watching a sheen of ice inch its way across the surface, is practice for the Classic.
“We get to the Classic like we did last year, and it’s 14 degrees outside and the wind is howling and the chill is so profound, the guy who has set in his tackle shop all offseason isn’t ready for that,” he said. “Me? I’m out in the middle of that every day. We hunted the other day – we got something like 10 inches of snow in less than an hour and a half. It was like blizzard conditions, whiteout. But we kept hunting the whole time.
“If that happens, I’m conditioned to that. It’s just another day at the office. I don’t even think about it, which allows me to focus on what I need to be focusing on, catching a fish.”
There is more to it though.
Powroznik spends his offseason guiding on Blandfield Plantation, one of Virginia’s oldest and most prestigious private hunting grounds. Driving into the pristine, almost immaculate grounds, one can easily imagine stepping back in time surrounded by the rolling hills and farmland of northern Virginia. A picturesque mansion, built sometime in between 1769 and 1773, sits at the heart of the property. The history of two wars that defined the country (the Revolutionary War and the Civil War) are draped everywhere in the region.
Quail and pheasant hunts take place during the year, but when the north winds blow and ducks leave Quebec, Ontario and northern states like New York, they make their way to places like Blandfield. It sits less than 100 miles from Chesapeake Bay, the cradle of where modern-day waterfowling was born more than a century ago.
Powroznik is a popular guide here, mixing a non-stop work ethic (another element of a successful angler), with an endless supply of dry wit and talent on finding ducks for his clients. The standard day begins with him, Will Argabright (a fellow guide) and Rex Bowen (Blandfield’s waterfowl manager) knocking on doors, waking up clients. An hour or more before daylight, each guide takes two to three clients each to an area. Decoys are set and the standard practice of working ducks begins. By mid-morning, everything is gathered up and it all goes back to the lodge.
While clients eat and nap, Powroznik, Argabright and Bowen scout new areas, gather equipment and prepare for an afternoon hunt. If the client finished his morning with a limit of ducks, he will hunt geese until dark.
During the final week of the season, once everyone was fed, Powroznik and the guides would return to the hunting areas in the dark, breaking ice for more than hour to ensure open water for the next day.
This process during the final weekend of the season produced 131 ducks (mostly gadwall, widgeon and mallards), along with seven Canada geese and a snow goose.
With more than 4,000 acres nestled along the edge of the Rappahannock River, there’s plenty Powroznik can choose from each day. Mixed around the creeks, fields and marsh on the plantation, there are 75 blinds that at any moment could be the place to be. A place where a client, who rushed in, ditched his business suit and donned camo, wants to have memorable day.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” Powroznik said, never mentioning any correlation between the pressures of competition. “We have to keep our mind open every day and every day changes. The ducks will go to one spot, to the next, then the next.
“And it’s not all about just what is happening the first hour of the day. We need to know where we can go at any time during the day and be successful. We manage our ducks the same way I would manage fish during a tournament.”
The real practice, though, is in the decision-making. Look back for decades at successful anglers and they will tell you the difference between a good angler and a great angler is twofold: The great ones make the right decisions and have the confidence they picked right.
“In the world of bass fishing, as far as tournament fishing, there’s no sense of beating around the bush, it’s all about making the right decisions,” Powroznik said, driving home the point. “Good and bad decisions make or break you. But the other part of that is, confidence can make or break you. You’ve got to have the experience to justify the confidence, and then the confidence to make a good decision. It all comes together with practice.
“I make the right decisions in duck hunting and bass fishing because I’ve been doing it so long. Not to mention I don’t take any time off. Once the bass fishing season is done, I’m doing the same things, just this time in the duck woods.”
He points out duck hunting doesn’t look like bass fishing: A duck flies, a fish swims; a duck will answer a call, a fish will react to a bait. But both are being moved by weather and the need to feed or procreate; both follow their own whims brought about by environmental changes. The oversimplification of it is quite clear to Powroznik.
The practical experience of making decisions to get in front of either one is the same. In a roundabout way, if Powroznik makes the wrong decision on either, he doesn’t get paid, or gets paid much less.
“We (Elite Anglers) always say that we have to practice everything,” Powroznik said. “So why not practice the most important part of the equation? Even if it’s not fishing!
“For me, I think the more decisions I make in that regard, the more confidence I get in making decisions. I’m not going to be scared to say, ‘I haven’t had a bite, I’m scrapping this,’ and then go do something different. I think what has helped me most in my career is I haven’t been scared to put down what I thought was going to be the correct thing and then go do something totally different because I practice it every day.”
“Not many people understand the practical experience you gain in those exercises by trying to constantly keep up with a wild creature, any creature. So yeah, I’m practicing for the Classic, I’m just doing it with a gun on my shoulder and a call on my lips.”