The first BASS Open is on the Harris Chain this year and I just slapped down $500 for the deposit on this event. The entry fee is pretty pricey but I feel pretty good about it. I’ve caught big bags at some small tournaments here and I already know what a lot of the lake looks like.
I already have some places where I know I can catch them and that gives me the freedom to try some new places.
One of the thoughts that initially crossed my mind is that some of the Harris Chain specialists know the lake even better than I do and they’ll probably beat me if they get into this tournament.
Then again, I’ve beaten them a few times as well.
It brings me to how I believe the mental aspect of fishing is so critical in your performance. I’ve got to affirm to myself that I can be a better fisherman then everyone else in the event including a lot of the full time pros that will be there.
Some may say that’s delusional, but it’s how you gotta think or you don’t even have a chance.
I’ve been wanting a new car lately and it would sure would nice to be able to afford a Black Chevy Tahoe LTZ or a Toyota Sequoia Limited. It’s funny how often you see these cars on the road after you’ve made up your mind you want one. I mean I see these cars everywhere I go now.
It goes to proves how you think about yourself and to yourself actually controls how things turn out in your life. There’s a part of your brain that controls what you pay attention to called the R.A.S or reticular activating system (man… I did learn something in college). If you think positive then your brain picks up on positive things and if you think negative, then it picks up negative things.
So my positives are that I’ve caught over 20 pounds countless times out here, I know the lake better than most of the field, I like the style of fishing on the Harris Chain, and I’ve got my eyes on the prize which is a boat, some cash, and a trip to the Classic.
Sorry to the avid readers out there for being M.I.A lately. I’ve been concentrating on saving enough money to join my friend Jeff Holland on the BASS Southern Opens next year. He called me the other day after he read my post “6 Steps to Becoming a Bass Pro” and was fired up and ready to fish the Opens next year.
I haven’t hit my monetary goal yet, but please refer your friends and family who has real estate needs and I promise they’ll receive the best possible service.
Lately, the US Open of tennis has been on TV and it’s been bringing back all kinds of childhood memories. For those of you that don’t know, most of my youth besides fishing was spent on the tennis court. Memories of the old man picking me up from school, parking the station wagon in the shade to take a nap during my 3 hours of tennis lessons every single day during the week before going back to work, waking up with an hour left in the lesson to yell at me, us taking trips to tournaments, and him having advice which I regarded at the time as totally useless have been occupying my mind lately.
My dad basically yelled advice and some obscenities to me every single day. The guy was trying to be helpful, but he yelled so much at me that it was a running joke at my tennis academy. Basically everyone became so accustomed to the old man’s yelling that everyone screamed at me imitating my old man with his thick Asian accent. I gotta admit it was a bit embarrassing at the time but now I don’t give a rat’s ass.
It brings me to the question of why I’m so driven to become a bass pro.
I love bass fishing, but competitive bass fishing is a whole different animal that I can’t seem to shake loose.
It gives me the opportunity for a lifestyle that I’ve grown up around. Preparing for tournaments and traveling all over the place to compete in them.
During my bid for Weekend Series National Championship in 2009, I’d wake up every morning to take advantage of my free breakfast at the hotel I stayed at and chat briefly with an old man named Edwin who traveled everywhere with his son to fishing tournaments. It reminded me of traveling with my old man during the tennis tournament days and I started every single day of that tournament with that old familiar feel of my youth…. me and the old man going all over the place and him cheering me on/yelling at me (they’re one in the same with him).
I told him I’ve been doing this my whole life with my old man as well, not fishing tournaments but going from town to town to compete in tournaments anyway. Neither one of us had to comment much more about it. We both knew why we were there and what we were involved in.
Probably the one advice from old man I utilized in that tournament was visualizing a course of action and positive outcome with every possible scenario on every single point or in this case cast. It really did help me make the most of the situation I was in.
I remember calling him to let him know I had a chance at making the Bassmaster Classic prior to the last day of the 2009 Bassmaster Weekend Series National Championship along with some possible coverage on ESPN2 and he had all kinds of advice for me yet he knows absolutely nothing about bass fishing.
What the hell?
Some people say I want to be a bass pro for the recognition, but nothing could be further from the truth. I just like reliving the days of my youth and have a chance at making the old man proud. I can’t say we’re the closest of friends but feel the need to prove myself all the time for some reason.
The competition aspect definitely doesn’t suck neither.
I also love to fish and would love to be able to do it every day.
I don’t want to sound corny but it’s the God’s honest truth. It’s pretty much a driver in life.
You may not know this, but my income does not come from fishing although it’s part of my plan in the future. At this point, I have to make enough money to at least have a shot at living the dream. For me, the best chance of accomplishing this goal is to concentrate on selling houses for a while.
I know, you hear it on the news all the time that the real estate market is in the dumps and will be for a long time. I’ll admit that home prices will not likely return to the levels we saw in 2005, but homes are selling and I can name countless people who will still make a 7 figure income from selling houses in 2011.
All I need is to make enough to buy a new boat and have enough money in savings to fish the BASS Opens and Everstarts next year. Needless to say, it’s still a lot of money.
I went to a seminar recently for accomplishing goals in real estate with 6 steps, but constantly related the tasks to fishing as well.
Step 1: Affirm – You need to affirm to yourself that you are who you want to be. In fishing or any other sport, you need to affirm to yourself daily that you are the best at what you do. The speaker used an example of Kid Rock on an interview with Pierce Morgan. As usual, the crass and rude Brit told Kid Rock that he’s no Tom Cruise in terms of looks or charisma and asked him if he had ever thought he’d be where he’s at today. Kid Rock’s answer was “everyday”. Kid Rock never had a doubt that he would be rock star some day. The speaker also noted that affirmation without discipline is delusion. For an aspiring bass pro, it means spending more time studying patterns on different lakes, spending more time becoming a better decision maker and time manager, and spend more time mastering different techniques and styles of fishing.
Step 2: Track - “That which is measured grows”. For me, I know how much money I need to make this year to fulfill my fishing goals next year and need to track it. The speaker suggested a simple thermometer. I also need to set goals for improving my fishing as well. I’m a total cluts when it comes to spinning equipment, not that good at skipping docks, and not the best offshore fisherman. I’ll need to set goals with deadlines to get better at these things.
Step 3: Find a Mentor – I don’t have a mentor at the moment, but I need to look at how some run of the mill guys (guys like us) have become a bass pro. Some names that come to mind is Randall Tharp, Greg Vinson, and John Cox. All these guys have made it from the ground up.
Step 4: Work – This is the part that sucks but unfortunately a necessity. There’s no substitute for time on the water and you gotta put the work in to improve your skills so that you can compete at the highest level. For me, this is 2 part: 1. I’ve gotta learn more about different lakes like Pickwick, Guntersville, Eufala, Okeechobee, etc. 2. get better at techniques that will work in those place. The Weekend Series Championship is at Santee Cooper this year, I’ll spend a lot of time pitching finesse worms to cypress trees with a spinning rod since it’s one technique that most winners have employed at Santee Cooper, namely Ken Ellis who’s the man up there. I totally suck with a spinning rod, but I’ll be good at it come this fall. The bite could be offshore, topwater, flippin, crankin, or spinnerbait but I’m a bit more comfortable doing that.
Step 5: Build – You build from your success. If you won a tournament lately, then you need to build from there. If you did well in a tournament recently, then you can build from there. The key here is to focus on your success.
Step 6: Map – Probably the best suggestion I got from this seminar was to map out your goals. You need to write your goals down and also write down how you’re going to accomplish them next to your goals. Nobody builds a house without blueprints. For my fishing, I need to make X amount this year (a whole heck of a lot), improve some techniques I don’t like, and focus more on work than fishing so that I can fish next year. I went out and bought a dry eraser board and written down my goals for fishing and real estate with steps to accomplish those goals. I’ll be keeping track of it daily along with my affirmations, “I will make a living from fishing so I can fish every day”.
I think these steps will have you achieve any goal you have for yourself, whether it be becoming a bass pro or anything else.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no bass pro, but I’ve made a commitment to work at this goal every single day and to tell myself that it is possible.
I’m putting my 2008 Triton 18X2 Non Skid for sale so I can get my new rig. It’s got a 150 Optimax with warranty til 2013, non skid deck instead of carpet, a Lowrance 28C HD & X-135, jack plate, 70 lb digital Motorguide trolling motor, galvanized trailer, swing tongue, bigger than group 31 batteries for trolling motor, Keelguard, 3rd livewell for bait, and more.
It’s been garage kept and in impeccable condition.
Sorry I haven’t post in a while, but like many of us, we’ve had to focus more on earning a living than fishing lately. It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about fishing all the time though.
One of the thoughts that occurred to me recently is that we all try too hard to make sense of what’s going on with bass. I mean really, there’s a lot of theories on bass behavior but there’s also a lot of gaps in those theories as well. There’s a lot of instances where you have to just go fishing and hope to hit one in the head to find’em.
I’m no scientist, but I know that bass don’t do what they’re supposed to do a lot of times. There’s a few things that always hold true like focusing on isolated cover, bass like stable weather, they spawn shallow, etc., but there’s a whole lot of stuff those theories can’t come close to explaining.
The only one who seems to have it figured out is Kevin Van Dam and I’ve read his book numerous times. Heck, even his book can’t explain everything.
I know bass like steep banks during the winter, get skittish when the water falls, love areas with hydrilla and a shell bar, and so on but I get a kick when someone talks to me about what the fish are doing like it’s some indisputable fact backed by empirical evidence. Heck, even the established theories get proven wrong all the time.
Galileo was thought be foremost expert on the shape of the Earth until Columbus proved his dumb ass wrong.
I took an economics theory class in college and the most important thing I learned in it had nothing to do with economics. I think the professor was a bit of a former hippy. His saying was “onward through the fog”. I wonder what kind of fog he was talking about to this day but I’ve got a pretty good idea.
Anyway, he said the point of his class was to teach us how decide for ourselves which theories in economics or theories we’ll hear about various subjects in the future are correct or incorrect. Along with insights from Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, the class provided me a structured way for me analyze intellectual contentions.
I guess I’m a skeptic at heart so I’m highly critical of any theories I hear on bass behavior. I hear a lot of theories from bass fisherman, bass magazines, and so called experts on bass behavior and I’m like I’ll believe it when I see it. I want empirical evidence that a lot of these guys can’t provide.
Just because they publish it in the Bassmaster Mag, it doesn’t mean it’s true.
My journey through the bass fishing fog is still a bit unclear with moments of clarity.
My hope is that the clearer moments will become more frequent.
Somehow I ran across this episode of Tom and Jerry and us bass fisherman can definitely relate to Tom. He gets all excited about getting a book in the mail called “How to Catch a Mouse” and then tries every trick in the book to catch Jerry. We do the same with tips found in Bassmaster Magazine for bass.
Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Tom never seems to win, but you gotta give it to him for being tirelessly driven.
Maybe I am living in the right place. I’ve got the Harris Chain which offers some of the best flippin water around the corner, the Kissimmee Chain which is the quintessential grass lake, and the Butler Chain which offers deep clear water where fish like to eat on ledges.
Sometimes you see things in your day to day that make you wonder. I noticed this Hojin St. sign driving back from Mt. Plymouth last night. What are the chances of a Hojin St. being where you live. I’ve never run into anyone with the same name around here much less seen a street with the same name.
The first BASS Open is on the Harris Chain this year and I just slapped down $500 for the deposit on this event. The entry fee is pretty pricey but I feel pretty good about it. I’ve caught big bags at some small tournaments here and I already know what a lot of the lake looks like.
