The Secret To Winning With Gerald Swindle
The
Secret To Winning With Gerald Swindle
The Run For The Championship-The Harris Chain of Lakes
and Smith Lake
Editor's Note: Thirty-four-year-old Gerald Swindle
of Hayden, Alabama, this year's BASS Angler of the Year,
has lived the American dream in the last 12 years. As
a $12,000-a-year carpenter, Swindle dreamed of earning
a living as a professional bass fisherman. This year,
Swindle already has earned more than $1/2-million in
his chosen sport. If he stays on track, he may earn
$1 million before December 31, 2004.
In
the 2003-2004 tournament bass-fishing season, Gerald
Swindle made more money than ever before in his life.
He had his sponsors solidly behind him and believed
he had the potential to become one of the world's next
great bass fishermen. The first BASS tournament of the
year took place on the Harris chain of lakes in Florida.
On the way to the tournament, Swindle thought about
his finishing fourth in the tournament on this lake
the past year. "I had an idea about what I needed
to do not only to catch bass but to win the tournament.
I thought if I could catch 10 or 12 pounds of bass a
day, then I'd have a shot at winning." For the
first two days of the tournament, Swindle did exactly
what he had expected to do, catching 10 or 12 pounds
of bass each day. However, because the other contestants
caught 15 to 18 pounds of bass per day, when the tournament
ended, Swindle had finished in 58th place. "I couldn't
believe I'd underestimated the pounds of bass I needed
to catch on the Harris chain of lakes to be competitive,"
Swindle says now. "The next tournament was on Smith
Lake, which is my home lake - the lake I grew up on.
However, in the last few years, I'd probably fished
Smith Lake less than any other lake in the country because
I was going to all the national tournaments, none of
which were held on Smith Lake. I was really nervous
when the tournament circuit came to Smith Lake. I knew
I'd be expected to do well there, but I also knew that
I had only been able to fish Smith lake four or five
times at the most each year since about 1998."
But on the first day of the tournament, Swindle felt
he'd found the pattern that would produce a winning
catch of bass. He went for broke and fished for the
biggest bass in Smith Lake to try to win the tournament
on his home lake. "I was fishing 30- to 40-feet
deep where I believed the bass to be holding with a
jig and a plastic worm," Swindle explains. "I
was so confident that I could catch big bass using that
tactic that I wouldn't
give up that strategy until the end of the day."
But at the end of the day, Swindle only brought one
little bitty bass to the weigh-in scales. As Swindle
remembers, "I told myself at the end of the day,
'Gerald, if you keep digging this same hole and fishing
this same deep-water pattern, you're going to drown
in this hole you're digging for yourself.' So, on the
second day of the tournament, Swindle made a decision
that would directly impact his ability to win the 2004
BASS Angler of the Year title.
TOMORROW: MORE SMITH LAKE TOURNAMENT
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