Excuses, Excuses

Recently, I had the opportunity to realize the rewards of a hard spent season on the local team tournament tour.  My partner, Charlie and I qualified 9^th on the Inland Empire Division of The Western Outdoors Bass Trail.  All of that earned us a chance to fish for a new boat and prizes valued at $50,000.  The event was held at Southern Nevada ’s Lake Mojave which is adjacent to the gambling mecca known as Laughlin Nevada .  Charlie and I juggled schedules, sharpened hooks, changed lines and set off across the desert in search of our destiny.

Pre fish was encouraging, after starting slow, we begin to notice that if we ran to the backs of coves, way in the back and found grass beds, there was always one, resident bass that would wack a top water presentation.  This pattern worked until the bright sun light completely engulfed the water.  After that, we discovered a pretty solid worm bite on the main river channel.  Main lake cuts, small indentations in the bank that produced a small point on each side produced a pretty solid worm bite.  The fish we pulled up were good sized fish, averaging  two and half pounds.  We figured that we could catch about 12 pounds per day in the two day event.  Our drive home from our pre fish trip was smooth as we both felt confident that the bites would come and we would be successful.

In retrospect, I now believe that Charlie and I did what we were suppose to do.  We put in the time to scout new water, we listened to the fish when they bit, and we put together something we had confidence in.  Before pre fishing, Charlie and I decided that we didn’t want to fish locally.  We both felt that a majority of the field would not attempt to run Lake Mojave’s two large basins, and a large number of boats would be crammed in the Southern end, making that part of the lake fish extremely small.  That choice we discovered was right on.  During the event, a little bit of wind made those big basins hostile and did keep a majority of the boats in that Southern End.  Confident?  You bet.  It was a good feeling and allowed us to sleep well at night as the event approached.

So what happened you ask?  Charlie and I caught three little bass in two days.  Our 5-06 weight was good enough for 61^st place out of a field of about 110 boats.  Disappointed?  You doubly bet!  It was a tough tournament.  When Charlie caught our second fish on day one with about 5 minutes left, and the weigh scales in sight, we actually moved up about 25 places.  On day two, our slightly over two pound bass, our single bass mind you, moved us up again.   

So What happened?

Word on the lake was the water level was falling at a clip of about 2 feet per day starting with the day before the tournament started.  We also had a mild front pass through during the week before the tournament started.  We had another front pass through during the tournament but it did not bring any rain.  We needed a little bit of wind on day one when it didn’t blow a breath and on day two the wind blew too much, we couldn’t hold on our good spots.  The bait fish moved out of our area and we were not able to relocate them and as it turned out, we had a lot of anglers fishing our water.  And the boat traffic? forgetabout it.  The number of hundredthousand dollar cigarette boats that run that Colorado River lake is unbelievable.  Those boats are loud and throw out so much boat wake.  Also, the strikes we did get were soft and almost too light to detect.  As soon as those bass felt us, they were gone.

Excuses, excuses.  After our measly showing, I promised myself that I would offer no rational about why we had done so poorly.  I would not target blame on some conditional situation that I had no control over.  Of course that is not our nature.  Our nature is to find something that is beyond our control and, using that, assign some sort of forgiveness to ourselves because something happened that we couldn’t be held responsible for.

John and Tammy Morrow, of Southern California fished the same lake on the same days as we did.  On day one they caught an amazing 17 pounds of bass and caught another 10 pounds of bass on day two.  They fished the same lake we did, yet they had phenomenal days.  What gives?

I have fallen into the excuse trap.  The iron jaws that grip us and squeeze us when we feel self-conscious or embarrassed about something we have failed to do.  Simply put, I may have put together an excellent pre tournament strategy, but I failed to finish the deal.  As the host of a weekly radio show, I interview the winners of bass tournaments every single week.  The common bond that each of these tournaments winners possesses:  They know how to make adjustments to changing lake conditions, so that the winning of a tournament is not at all about finding the fish, its about staying with the fish.  Its about how the individual angler adjusts to the changing conditions.  I should have also mentioned that when I got in the boat, I left my big fish cookies on the dash board of the truck….Excuses, Excuses.