Top Professional Bass Fishermen Say, We Fish to Win
Rick Clunn Fishes to Win
Editor's Note: Why do some bass fishermen consistently
win tournaments and other good, even great, bass anglers
never win tournaments? To learn the answer to this question,
I’ve interviewed some of the most-outstanding
bass fishermen in the nation, and they all agree that
to win an angler has to make a conscious decision to
fish to win and leave the security of trying to catch
a limit behind.
"I can’t believe you made a 50-mile run
to reach a spot where you knew you only could fish for
1-1/2-hours," I told Rick Clunn, a four-time Bassmaster
Classic winner, years ago when he won a $100,000 tournament
on Lake Mead near Las Vegas, Nevada. “You would’ve
earned a pretty good paycheck in fifth place, if you’d
just caught enough bass to hold your position. But if
the fish hadn’t been there after that long run,
you could’ve lost it all. Why did you take a big
gamble like that to go for broke?”
Clunn
said, "I always fish to win. No one remembers who
came in second place, and second place isn’t an
option for me. In bass tournaments, I fish to win."
Clunn’s many tournament wins have proved that
going for broke in life or in bass fishing separates
the winners from the losers. But how does the fish-to-win
philosophy affect the fishing of today’s tournament
pros who have adopted this mindset? What areas and what
type of lures do they fish to catch the biggest bass
in any lake?
No one has won more major bass-fishing tournaments
in his career than Rick Clunn of Ava, Missouri. "All
fishermen practice and fish to place themselves in position
to win tournaments," Clunn explains. "However,
at some point, you have to consciously make the decision
to win. Psychologically, most of us feel that there
are very-few events that will allow us to win. Many
tournament fishermen believe that if they're fishing
14 tournaments a year they need to make their checks
and build points in each tournament to be in the end-of-the-season
championship. That’s their number-one concern
– not to win.
“I’m convinced that most tournament anglers
never make the
conscious decision to fish to win. There's a vast difference
between preparing to win and trying to win. Whether
in fishing or life, most of us are preparing to be successful;
however, we never make a conscious effort to flip the
switch from preparing for success to actually attempting
success. All this preparation creates a mindset of winning
tomorrow, instead of today. To win bass tournaments,
the fisherman has to decide to win that day, regardless
of what's required for him to win."
What has to happen for a fisherman to shift gears and
go for the win? Generally, the angler has to decide
that he can't win fishing the location he's fishing
and catching the size bass for which he's fishing. He
has to willingly to give up the sure limit, the points
and the check and search for bass in a place he never
may have fished previously, using lures and tactics
he may not have used before on that lake, under those
conditions.
"You have to be a gambler," Clunn emphasizes.
"You have to be willing to give up a sure limit
and instead attempt to find the big bass that are required
to win. If you don't have the courage and aren’t
willing to gamble on the chance to win, you'll never
win a bass tournament. You have to fish where no one
else has fished before, look for bass where no one else
has searched for them and often fish a tactic no one
else will. To win, you must abandon conventional thinking
and reasoning. A bass-fishing tournament winner has
to be able to think creatively and make decisions courageously,
even at the risk of being foolish. The hardest decision
a fisherman has to make is to fish to win today and
not tomorrow. Many of my losses have happened because
I’ve left the area where I’ve been catching
big fish, trying to save them for tomorrow."
For instance, Clunn lost a tournament on the first
day at Lake Champlain one year. He had a 17-pound stringer
of bass, and over the next two days, he caught over
20 pounds of bass, losing the tournament by 1 pound.
"That philosophy of preparing to win tomorrow cost
me that tournament," Clunn recalls. "I should
have stayed on that spot and continued to catch the
biggest bass I could that day, instead of attempting
to save those fish for the rest of the tournament. To
win a tournament, you have to decide that there is no
tomorrow. You have to believe, ‘Today’s
the only day I have to win, so I have to maximize my
catch today and win today.’ You have to fish every
tournament as if it’s the only tournament you'll
fish in your life, and you have to fish to win every
day of the tournament. If you look back at the history
of bass fishing, the anglers who've won the most tournaments
are the ones who’ve decided to try to win each
day they’ve fished.”
Tomorrow: Denny Brauer’s
Gambling Attitude When He Fishes
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