BECOMING A COMPETITION TOURNAMENT BASS FISHERMAN...By Jigs

[texas john]

BECOMING A COMPETITION TOURNAMENT BASS FISHERMAN


We all have dream of fishing a Bass tournament and becoming a Kevin Van Dam, Gary Dobyns, a Skeet Reese, a Roland Martin, a Jimmy Houston or my personal favorite Hank Parker and so on. They make it look so easy and fun. Fun? Yes it is and can be!
Let me take a few minutes and try to explain just what it takes and what to expect to become successful like the pre mentioned professional tournament fishermen.
Sure you may be able to go out and catch a limit of nice Bass today, tomorrow or next week, or anytime at your leisure. That is where it stops. The minute you stop fishing for fun, you start paying out money to prefish and enter a competition Bass tournament, your mind seems to change. Now it becomes the mind set that you must get your money back and your mind does funny things, you forget what brought you here in the first place. “Fun fishing for Bass”.
You must have a goal.
Besides having fun at something you seem to love, you must be dedicated to what you want and be willing to sacrifice other things to obtain your goal. Do you really want to be a pro Bass fisherman? Next year, the year after? Like any school you have attended or college course you have taken, you must study hard to get an “A”. Time on the water will be your best friend and is the open book for this venture. Just like reading an open book, every hour you can spend on the water is more knowledge you can obtain to reach your goals. It takes years and years of studying and schooling to learn how to be successful in life. Years spent in college to get a degree and a good job and be successful in the working world. Just like the previous mentioned comes the Professional tournament angler. Years of time on the water, years of learning and sacrifices you have to make. You can not learn all of this overnight. I know people that get up in the morning and first thing they do is spend a hour or so on the water before going to work. Or they get off of their job and run to a lake to spend a hour or even minutes before going home to do chores, eat and sleep and do it all again the next day. You have to pay your dues.
Skills
Also you must posses some sort of talent, or skill. Just like American Idol, 1000’s try for it, but the top ten make it to the finish and one makes it to the top, not all can sing the song or carry a tune. Some tournament fishermen can figure out water and the Bass within hours on an unfamiliar lake, this is talent and plain experience (time on the water). The old saying that a Bass is a Bass is a Bass is true. The only difference is the knowledge you have retained or know about certain water or the Bass in question, and how you remember or use it. You can’t run until you can first walk.
Attitude
Having fun, loving what you are doing and keeping in mind a good attitude I would say is the most important. You can beat yourself to death and be your worst enemy during any tournament. You caught a lot of fish yesterday, last week, but zero today, why? You had great success and fun fishing for Bass last week. Key word “fun”. Put aside in your mind the money you have spent to get here, if you worry about it, you will fail. Remember Mother Nature put this here for us to enjoy and have fun at it. Unlike baseball or auto racing. The only similarity being, people will push you, race you to your fishing spot and crowd you, (let it go). There is a lot of water out there! At any time a Bass is a Bass and can do anything, and change moods, but they will always eat something somewhere, sometime. It’s up to you and your knowledge and talent to figure them out. That’s the sport of it all and the fun of it. If you decide it is not fun, then like any job or sport, move on to something else, something your good at. But above all leave with a great attitude and knowledge that you did do your best and had fun doing it.
Summary
I have never seen a bowler that has never bowled before, grab a ball and throw strikes, becomes a winner, without a few gutter balls first.
I hope this helps. On a personal note, after tournament Bass fishing for some 20 plus years, it for me became not fun anymore, so I went back to whence I became and fish for fun and the relaxation of it. I now enjoy it tremendously once again.
Above all, enjoy, have fun, good luck and I hope you make it. Remember, “It’s not all in your hands!”

Jigs