Poor Execution, But Decent Results

One of my main focuses at the beginning of any tournament season is doing well enough to make it to the next level, such as gaining berths to regional and national championships. This year was no exception.

This year was my first to break through into competing in the FLW National Guard College Fishing tour, and my sights were set, first and foremost, on qualifying for the National Championship. The realization of that goal was set in motion early by qualifying for the Regional Championship by way of our (my teammate Len Gordon and I) 3rd-place finish at the first divisional tournament on Lake Okeechobee.

The FLW National Guard Regional Championship is the gateway to the National Championship, so Len and I, having already qualified, were very excited. After we found out that it was to be held in our back yard on Lake Monroe, and that the University of Central Florida (our school) was to be the venue for the weigh-in show, we grew even more excited.

Though Monroe is a lake that I had little experience on or knowledge of, I felt confident that we would not only make the Top 5 and get a berth to the big show, but I felt positive that we would have a chance to win. And coming off my victory at the BFL Super Tournament on Lake Okeechobee, I felt I was fishing at a level at which I would be unstoppable.

The regional, held in October, brought with it a reality check that I will not soon forget.

Overconfidence to Lack of Confidence

Basically, for the regional you could practice as much as you liked up to 9 days prior to the event, at which time the lake would go off limits until the official practice day the day before the event began.
Len and I only fished 1 day together before Monroe went off limits, but I got on the water for about 5 days, where I basically drove around looking for areas that looked good to me, and then fishing those areas to get comfortable with how the fish reacted to certain techniques. I basically saw the entire system, which included much of the St. Johns River and the entirety of Lake Monroe.

I had seen it all, caught some good fish, and had a notebook full of areas that might be productive during the event. I spent the 9 off-limits days feeling confident that I did what I needed to do during practice.

During the official practice day, Len and I retained a high level of confidence while we loaded our FLW loaner Ranger Z-20 with our gear and rubbed elbows with other teams and tournament officials. We ended up getting out on the water at 8:30 a.m., along with all the other teams.

Our plan was to systematically cover all the waypoints I had saved on my Navionics iPhone app during practice, which basically covered the entire system. We were as efficient as you could be in a practice day, and we covered almost all of our key areas from down by the Highway 415 bridge all the way up to Blue Springs in the opposite direction.

We caught a bunch of fish and saw a lot of water. We figured we would need around 10 pounds a day to win, and we had caught about 12 pounds just “sloppy fishing.”

Then a weird thing happened: I lost all my confidence!

I couldn’t put a finger on it until I got home that night and organized my thoughts. I then realized the reason that I had lost faith in our chances to win was that I (not Len) had spread us too thin in such a limited practice period.

One thing about Florida tournament fishing is that rarely is it a matter of duplicating a pattern and making a milk run, but rather it's about eliminating water and keying in on key areas that hold the size fish you are looking for.

And what had we done? Caught a fish here, caught a fish there ... but we never found an area or a single technique that we could utilize to win a 3-day event. The only thing that we felt remotely confident in for the long term was that we had patterned some decent fish on the deepest outside bends around downed palm and oak trees in the river, and we had some key oxbows where we found some quality fish.

In a single day, we had tried to cover a system that should take several days to dissect, and our minds were a mess. It was my fault, too.

I didn’t sleep too well that night. I spent the entire night working and reworking our steps to be able to make our haphazard milk run as efficient and effective as possible, but I knew it would be a fiasco.

Squeakers

Day 1 was a bad day for me. We started in our favorite area just west of the 415 bridge, concentrating on large pad fields, making long casts with watermelon-red Zoom Super Flukes into the meat of the mangled green mess.

Going there was a last-minute decision (my idea) that morning, because I felt we could get there first and get a quick limit before other teams showed up and tore the place to pieces. Well, that didn’t happen. We didn't catch anything in any of our best areas over there, probably because we fished too fast – which was a byproduct of spreading ourselves too thin.

Len ended up catching some fish on our outside-bend pattern, but by 11:30 I hadn’t caught a keeper. I was getting really irritated, too.

It then hit me like a ton of tungsten that the current was moving more than it had been and that the mouths of the oxbows where I had caught some of my biggest practice fish could be on fire, so we headed to one of my favorites. I started by flipping the mouth of the oxbow, when I heard the most beautiful sound I would hear all week.

Whoosh! A bass destroyed a school of shad in the mouth of the oxbow, then another bass joined the buffet. I quickly put down my broomstick and grabbed my new 7-foot Colmic spinning rod and launched a soft-plastic jerkbait to the gang of schoolers. I caught my 3-fish limit in a matter of minutes and Len rounded out his as well.

The day was salvaged, and we finally pinpointed a new key pattern for the rest of the event.
We finished the day in 6th place with just under 10 pounds, which we thought would be enough for at least a Top-3 spot. That is, until we saw the huge bas that were caught, including the University of Florida’s 21-pound sack of giant bass.

Funny thing, though; I was more fired up and confident going into day 2 with an 11-pound deficit to make up than I had been all week. I now wanted to win more than ever, and a huge positive was that we'd eliminated a lot of water and could fish cleaner.

Despite the fact that our weight dropped off on day 2, I can honestly say we were fishing better and more confidently. Our outside-bend pattern had dissolved, but we were able to get on some reliable schooling fish in a new area, and then again in the area where we'd found them the day before.

I caught my limit launching the jerkbait to the schoolers, and they were good fish, too. However, though Len had saved us the day before, he had a hard time connecting with the fish that day and caught only one. Despite the fact that I had about eight keepers that day, we could only come to the scales with four fish.

We both thought that we would surely be bumped out of the cut, and I sincerely felt we deserved to be ousted seeing that we competed so poorly during practice and on the first day.

The weigh-in was a nail-biter. I thought we had no chance at ending up in the Top-5, but the possibility of getting to fish the final day and making the National Championship started to look better every minute.

With just a few teams to go we were in 5th place, right on the bubble. That’s when I realized that nobody else could bump us out since the final two teams to weigh in were already in the Top 5.

That’s about the time when someone came up to me and asked “What’s the tie-breaker?”

What? What do you mean, tie-breaker? Turned out that we were tied with USC Upstate.

It was pretty intense for a couple minutes there. When it was all said and done, we won the tie-breaker by finishing higher in the divisional and got to fish the final day.

On day 3 we pretty much decided that we needed about 24 pounds to win, so we decided to completely leave the schooling fish and hit big-fish areas instead. Even if we zeroed, we couldn’t fall any lower than we already were.

We basically flipped all day. I used two flipping baits – a new prototype jig from Secret Lures and a Speed Craw punching rig with a 1-ounce weight and a 5/0 Lazer TroKar flipping hook.

I stayed in a good mental state all day, but if I told you I fished well I'd be lying because I feel my boat positioning was atrocious. The fish get really spooky on that river and I should have maintained the distance from the matted hyacinth, but instead I was right on top of the stuff.Whether or not that was the problem, I don’t know. I came to the scales with one fish, and we maintained our 5th-place position.

Reflection

It’s a tough deal when you don’t live up to your own expectations in front of a hometown crowd, especially when your rival, the Florida Gators, completely dominates you on your home turf. If you had told me that we wouldn’t even have found the fish to make it within 10 pounds of winning I would have called you a liar, but unfortunately that was the fact of the matter.

On the plus side, I learned a lot during the event, like how overconfidence can promote complacency, and failure to recognize a problem with a gameplan, like we experienced with our practice. I believe that you need to balance confidence and solid planning to win. Confidence is not sufficient by itself to win without the competency to formulate a plan of attack.

Another huge positive is that I actually got the opportunity to fish such a great event. FLW and the National Guard put a lot of effort and money into their College Fishing program, and I would recommend that every college student jump at the opportunity to compete in at least one of their events.

Oh, and let's not forget, Sonar and Len are going to the National Championship, baby! I plan on eating some Gator meat when I get there.

Miles "Sonar" Burghoff is a student at the University of Central Florida and an aspiring professional angler. He writes a regular column for BassFan.