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Dock Post 4/27/08

April 27, 2008

First of all I feel like I need to apologize to everyone who dared to include me in your fantasy fishing team for Lake Norman. I thought I was going to do well in this event and made a conscious effort to go back to fishing for “points” and go for a solid top 50 finish. It was a very close tournament, one of the closest I’ve ever seen, where one pound one way or the other made a huge difference in the standings. I had some bad luck (as usual) in the boat draw department on day one, which without a doubt cost me a 5 pounder and another 2 1/2 right beside it. Then on day two, I snagged a 3 1/4 pound fish in the tail accidentally after fishing for it for over an hour. According to the rules I had to release that fish too, which was quite painful. That’s the first time that has ever happened to me in a tournament.

You know, this is the greatest sport in the World and it’s my life, I love it, and when I have a bad tournament like this it kills me. This is my 4th really bad tournament out of the last 5 and I can’t really put my finger on what’s going on. I’ve seen friends go through this in the past and honestly thought to myself that it could never happen to me, but ha ha ha…I guess it can happen to anyone at anytime. The worst thing about it is that it’s not like other sports. Take golf for instance; If you are struggling in a certain area of your game like putting, you can go work on your putting and try to correct the issue. In bass fishing you can actually do everything perfectly…make all the right decisions, make the perfect casts all day long, prepare harder than anyone else, but then you can lose a big one, have some bad luck, or just not get the right bites and you suddenly find your self at the bottom of the stats sheet. And in a two day event, you can’t afford to make a mistake or have too much bad luck.

There’s no question that there is a Luck factor in tournament bass fishing, but when you look at the standings from event to event over the years, it proves that it’s not all luck. Like all other sports, the best of the best stand out. The same names usually seem to show up near the top. But it also seems like everyone goes through a series of bad tournaments at least sometime in their career. It is called a slump, and I think you could probably say I’m in one right now. It’s interesting that Beaver Lake is the next tournament. I can’t think of a better place to come out of it with a top 10. But as a warning to everyone playing Fantasy Fishing…please don’t pick me for any crazy reason in that one despite what I may say in the practice videos. I’ve had great practices there before and then bombed every time. I openly admit that I hate that place and as I pre-fish I will keep my eyes open for the plug!

Next, I’m heading off to a special event at Lake Dardenelle, AR, but before that I have a couple days to get organized and relax so I’m excited about getting a little breather. Then after Beaver Lake I get to go home for 3 weeks and play on Presque Isle Bay. That is our biggest break of the entire season and we are all looking forward to that.

Well, we are starting to get packed up and start heading to Arkansas tomorrow so I have to get going. I’ll be in touch after the Beaver Lake tournament and hopefully won’t have to continue making excuses for another bad performance. Thanks again for all the encouraging emails and I hope you are enjoying the videos. Speaking of the videos, we had a little technical problem with some of the latter videos from this event, but they will be up very soon.

Later,

Dave

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