{"id":353,"date":"2013-09-02T04:14:35","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T04:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andermeine.com\/new\/?p=353"},"modified":"2013-09-02T04:14:35","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T04:14:35","slug":"winning-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/2013\/09\/02\/winning-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning is Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve learned a bit the last few years about what it takes to win tournaments. \u00a0This year I made a commitment to myself to fish to win. \u00a0Previously, I’ve kind of fished to just…do well. \u00a0I’ve always wanted to win, but at the same time, just finishing in the money was satisfactory. \u00a0I’ve always just kind of fished to “save face.” \u00a0I just wanted to be consistently good. \u00a0If I got a limit every tournament, I was happy. \u00a0Sure 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. \u00a0Last year I started realizing that I wasn’t as happy anymore with simply getting 2nds and 3rds. \u00a0That fire to win really started to burn. \u00a0It really started to burn after winning the FAN Championship last year. \u00a0I realized that 2nds and 3rds just don’t cut it for me anymore. \u00a0This year, I decided I was going to fish to win. \u00a0That means taking bigger risks. \u00a0Targeting winning fish only. \u00a0Sure 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. \u00a0It’s been working. \u00a0I think I’ve won as many times this year alone so far, as I have in the last 3 years combined. \u00a0It’s definitely working. \u00a0Not 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. \u00a0The only difference now, is that 1st place is happening much more frequently now.<\/p>\n

Let’s take last week’s TTZ Wednesday Nighter on Lake Austin for example. \u00a0There’s some pretty heavy hitters in the group of guys that fish that thing. \u00a0In order to win, you HAVE to go for the big ones. \u00a0Just trying to scratch out a limit is not going to do you any good. \u00a0Leading up to the tournament, I had been on a pretty good bite and found a couple of pretty key spots just loaded with fish. \u00a0We 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. \u00a0It took less than 30 minutes. \u00a0We continued to fish the area for a while because I knew there were better fish in the area and that we could cull up. \u00a0About 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. \u00a0I placed 3rd the week before with a 13lb limit, but I knew it certainly wouldn’t be enough to win. \u00a0Before 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. \u00a0They were still biting there after all. \u00a0At that point though, I knew that in order to have a shot at winning, we NEEDED a big fish. \u00a0I made the call to leave them biting and decided to hit up areas I knew had big bass potential. \u00a0As the end of the tournament neared, we had about 5 minutes left to fish, and we still didn’t have our big bass. \u00a0In 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. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0I made the decision and as quick as I could, I put on a big 10″ PowerTeam Lures Ribbon Hinge worm. \u00a0Sure enough, just enough time to make about 3 casts. \u00a0On the second cast, it…got…crushed. \u00a0We netted a 7lber, threw it in the livewell, and took off back to the weigh-in. \u00a0We won. \u00a0That’s what it’s all about. \u00a0Fish to win. \u00a0Take the risks you need to take to give yourself a shot at winning.<\/p>\n

\"17lbs<\/a>
17lbs tops 29 teams.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve learned a bit the last few years about what it takes to win tournaments. \u00a0This year I made a commitment to myself to fish to win. \u00a0Previously, I’ve kind of fished to just…do well. \u00a0I’ve always wanted to win, but at the same time, just finishing in the money was satisfactory. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}