I feel like I’ve learned a bit the last few years about what it takes to win tournaments. This year I made a commitment to myself to fish to win. Previously, I’ve kind of fished to just…do well. I’ve always wanted to win, but at the same time, just finishing in the money was satisfactory. I’ve always just kind of fished to “save face.” I just wanted to be consistently good. If I got a limit every tournament, I was happy. Sure I won a few along the way, but towards the end of last year I had to face the fact that, I wasn’t really fishing to win. Last year I started realizing that I wasn’t as happy anymore with simply getting 2nds and 3rds. That fire to win really started to burn. It really started to burn after winning the FAN Championship last year. I realized that 2nds and 3rds just don’t cut it for me anymore. This year, I decided I was going to fish to win. That means taking bigger risks. Targeting winning fish only. Sure you end up falling short plenty of times, but when you’re actually swinging for the fences, you get there more often than you would just trying to get on base. It’s been working. I think I’ve won as many times this year alone so far, as I have in the last 3 years combined. It’s definitely working. Not only that, but I’ve found an interesting side effect of fishing to win: I’m still getting just as many good 2nd and 3rd place finishes as I ever did. The only difference now, is that 1st place is happening much more frequently now.
Let’s take last week’s TTZ Wednesday Nighter on Lake Austin for example. There’s some pretty heavy hitters in the group of guys that fish that thing. In order to win, you HAVE to go for the big ones. Just trying to scratch out a limit is not going to do you any good. Leading up to the tournament, I had been on a pretty good bite and found a couple of pretty key spots just loaded with fish. We started off at my best spot and had a limit in the boat faster than I’ve ever had a limit in the boat in a Wednesday nighter. It took less than 30 minutes. We continued to fish the area for a while because I knew there were better fish in the area and that we could cull up. About halfway through the 3 hr tournament, the sun started to go down and by then we had culled 3 or 4 times up to about a 12-13lb limit. I placed 3rd the week before with a 13lb limit, but I knew it certainly wouldn’t be enough to win. Before this year, I probably would’ve stayed put to see if we could continue to upgrade bit by bit and would’ve been satisfied with that. They were still biting there after all. At that point though, I knew that in order to have a shot at winning, we NEEDED a big fish. I made the call to leave them biting and decided to hit up areas I knew had big bass potential. As the end of the tournament neared, we had about 5 minutes left to fish, and we still didn’t have our big bass. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that I needed to put on a bait with better potential for a big bite than what I’d been throwing… the only problem was, I kept hesitating to take the time to put one on since we had so little time left. I knew though, that even if I was only left with time to make 3 casts with a different bait, I stood a better chance of getting that big bite. I made the decision and as quick as I could, I put on a big 10″ PowerTeam Lures Ribbon Hinge worm. Sure enough, just enough time to make about 3 casts. On the second cast, it…got…crushed. We netted a 7lber, threw it in the livewell, and took off back to the weigh-in. We won. That’s what it’s all about. Fish to win. Take the risks you need to take to give yourself a shot at winning.
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