Small changes have Vinson in AOY Top 5

After enduring the toughest year of his career in 2014, Greg Vinson made a few small changes to his conditioning and preparation routine.

Greg Vinson didn’t take up Yoga or join a high-impact aerobics class to get ready for the Bassmaster Elite Series season.

He didn’t take a six-week vow of silence or throw away all of his tackle and start from scratch.

After enduring the toughest year of his career in 2014, the veteran Alabama pro simply made a few small changes to his conditioning and preparation routine – and through five tournaments this year, they’ve led to some gigantic results.

“It wasn’t like I planned to make a big comeback this season or anything like that,” said Vinson, who is currently ranked fourth in the 2015 Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year (AOY) standings. “But literally, I was staring at a situation where I needed to get back to fishing consistently just to be able to keep fishing. Cashing checks is important.

“I just had to take a look at what went wrong last year, and it honestly wasn’t all that much.”

It was understandable for Vinson to re-examine things after last season. In eight Elite Series events, he never finished higher than 41st and earned only one check.

He was feeling low, but the healing process began in August when he started writing an eight-part article titled “Average Pro” for his personal website. The autobiographical piece chronicles Vinson’s life and career from his days as a child angler to where he is now.

He said it helped him feel fortunate to be a pro fisherman again.

“I was kind of beating myself up because I was just having one bad tournament after another,” Vinson said. “It was like somebody taking a sledgehammer and continuously pounding me in the ground. But the article reminded me how far I had come and made me appreciate where I was.

“Looking back on last season, I felt like I had mostly done the right things. But for whatever reason, I just didn’t get the bites.”

Vinson began preparing for the 2015 season months in advance.

The first step was acknowledging he was no longer the young, athletic guy who played quarterback for central Alabama’s Benjamin Russell High School. At age 38, he was officially “middle-aged,” and he decided to start eating and exercising more like a grown-up.

“I had started to slip off into that hole, thinking I could get up every day, eat junk, practice from daylight to dark and then just get up and do it again the next day,” said Vinson, whose career accomplishments include a second-place finish in the 2012 Bassmaster Classic. “After three days of that in practice, then I’d go into the tournament and try to last three or four more days.

“I realized last year and maybe a little bit the year before that I just couldn’t do that anymore.”

After suffering through so many wind sprints for sports in high school, Vinson said he despises running. But he forced himself to do it during the offseason – and when he didn’t feel like running, he walked.

He also went a non-fanatical diet, avoiding the “junk” that was worst for him and cutting portion sizes for even the best foods. He said the changes made him feel better and quickly improved his mental approach.

“I noticed when I got up early in the morning like that to exercise, it really kind of opened my mind up and I felt fresh,” said Vinson, who earned Academic All-American honors as an environmental science major at Auburn-Montgomery. “The wheels would start turning early in the day instead of 1, 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I’m constantly thinking about fishing anyway. So the earlier I can get started in the day, the more information I can process.”

Fishing with a new mentality, Vinson finished 20th in the season-opening event at the Sabine River that much of the Elite Series field was dreading. He followed that with an eighth-place showing at Guntersville – his first Elite Series Top 10 finish in almost two years.

“I worked hard during the offseason, getting ready for the Sabine River,” Vinson said. “I knew that was going to be a big challenge. But I also knew, if I could come out of it with a good finish, it could carry a lot of weight as the season went on – and it has.”

Since those first two events, a one-day-at-a-time approach has helped Vinson finish 22nd at the Sacramento River and 45th at Lake Havasu. A 60th-place finish at BASSfest on Kentucky Lake in June was the only time all season Vinson has not earned a check.

The quiet consistency has placed Vinson’s name among some of fishing’s heaviest hitters in the AOY standings. Only Dean Rojas, Justin Lucas and Aaron Martens are ahead of Vinson, while Brent Ehrler, Cliff Pirch and Kevin VanDam are trailing close behind.

Still, Vinson is careful about basking in his accomplishments.

“I’m trying to be careful with that because I remember my 2010 season,” Vinson said. “I had several really good tournaments and was in the Top 10 in the points. Then I had a bomb at Clarks Hill and almost ended up missing the Classic.

“I think that might have been good for me in the long run. That’s what keeps me grounded and sort of led me to where I am today.”