When I compare my performance last year to where I am this year, it’s night and day. I finished 69th in the 2022 Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year points race, and now I’m leading this year’s standings.
I can’t really point my finger to anything in particular that has made my year go from how bad it was last year to how good it is this year. The only thing I can say is that I’ve really focused on consistency.
In every single tournament, I’ve just tried to get bites. Last year, it seemed like I was trying to catch big ones and catch big bags, but this year, I’ve just tried to get bites for eight hours a day. I’ve tried to set the hook as much as possible and just see how it ends up.
For the most part, it’s more of a decision-making thing where you might have a place in practice where you got one big bite or three good bites. You might have another area where you were getting way more bites, but they might have been smaller. I’ve tried to focus on the places where I thought I could get the most bites.
All things being considered, if I had to grade myself, I’d go with an 87%. There have been a few times where I wasted a few hours, and I have had a few execution issues.
For example, at the season opener on Lake Okeechobee, I was frogging and moving so fast I had a bow in my line. I got a big bite, but I hadn’t straightened my line out and that cost me a 4-pounder.
There have been others, but each time I made an execution error, I’d tell myself that one fish in the course of a day can equal a lot of points in the AOY race. Even though I’m currently leading, there’s still room for improvement.
Perfection is a moving target.
That’s pretty much my approach to life — never stop improving. As far as how this relates to the AOY race, there will be a number that someone will have to reach to win. Right now we don’t know what that number is.
Whatever it is, I have the most at this point, so I’m the closest to that number. But none of this changes my decision-making at all. Maybe in the last event it will, but not right now.
I can say I’ve had a good feeling all season and that started at Okeechobee. Going into that event, my practice left me thinking I probably couldn’t catch very much weight, but I could catch a limit really quickly. Well, my fourth bite of the day was like a 4 1/2-pounder, and I caught a 3-something. Not long after, I caught another 4 1/2-pounder.
So, from the very first day, the first hour, I felt like I was getting fortunate with the bites I was getting. On that first day, I didn’t think I could catch as much weight as I did, and from then on, it just seemed like everything went smoothly.
Looking at the last three events of this season, the Northern Swing will be interesting, for sure. I’ve have ups and downs with smallmouth; last year, my best finish was on St. Lawerence. Earlier in my career, some of my worst finishes were on smallmouth fisheries.
But I’m going all in this year. I’ll fish for largemouth some on Lake Champlain, but I’m going to do my best to finish strong with smallmouth. I know the formula, I just have to get them in the boat.
