No Fear

I’ve spent enough time in the boats of top pros to know that there are dozens of reasons I could never compete at the top level. Most of them do just about everything better than the weekend angler or even the Double or Triple-A competitors. Still, it’s not casting or boat driving or knot tying or lure selection that makes the biggest difference. In my opinion, the greatest difference between the large number of us and the small number of them is the ability to break down water. In a nutshell, that means that they can go to a massive but featureless place like St. Clair and figure it out quickly. Or to what seems like 800,000 acres and an equal number of cut-off trees at Toledo Bend, and not only learn to navigate it in two and a half days without breaking all of their stuff, but also to find the winning group or groups of fish in the process.

Yes, I know that there is both legal and illegal information sharing, pre-tournament research, and of course mapping, that’s better than ever before. On places where they’ve been before, there’s also tournament history, but I can guarantee that most of us would dump the boat in at a place like Oahe and spend the first half day – or perhaps more – totally lost. In the rearview mirror, post-tournament, it looks easier, but it’s still far from easy.

There are tournaments where most of the field ends up in a limited number of community holes. Those are not the ones I’m talking about. In those, the ability to catch a few more fish, or a few bigger fish, makes a difference. But most of the time that’s not the case. I’m talking about expansive bodies of water outside of your comfort zone

Imagine you’re a kid from South Louisiana who’s used a flipping stick for a depthfinder most of his life, or a striver from northern Michigan who’s never fished dirty water. You can do all of the map study you want, but once you’re actually on the playing field, if you take your eyes off the prize for a second you’ll get a bad case of fishing vertigo. I know that I’m not necessarily totally intimidated by new bodies of water, but I am uber-cautious about them, and thanks to my travels I’ve fished more famous and divergent bass lakes than most of you. Still, there’s that initial moment of panic and fear of embarrassing myself when confronted with a new situation.

The point is that the best of them never for a second even consider that they won’t catch fish. They know what they don’t know, but that serves as a building block rather than an impediment. I’ve always said of anglers like Kelly Jordon and Dean Rojas and Ish Monroe that they could not get a bite on a tournament day and they’ll be a hundred percent convinced that they’re going to go out and bust 20 pounds the next day – because they’ve done it before. That’s the cornerback-on-an-island-short-memory mentality that wins tournaments and builds careers.