When All Else Fails You on Tournament Day

It's a bright sunny day in the middle of July. Sweat profusely drips from your scorched chin and runs down the back of your neck as the 95-degree weather and breath-taking sun beat down endlessly on you, almost as though in punishment for something you've done, or perhaps not done. You've fished for five straight hours now without getting a bite. Every lure you own looks uglier than it ever did before. The solid pattern you established the day before seems to have vanished into thin air...as though you perhaps only had been dreaming about pulling one bass after the other into the boat.

Being an experienced angler, your mind revs up into overdrive, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure out something that will turn your fortunes--or more precisely, the lack of them--around. What to do? That, my friends, is the $64,000 question of the day.

All the while, in the back of your head, you know that, if you discover how to put those pieces back together, it will be as if someone just flipped on a giant air-conditioner when you finally put that first fish in the boat. So, how do you find those missing pieces?

If you're fishing the same time of day and the same place as the prior day, it would seem fairly obvious that something--be it current, weather or whatever--has changed, or (far less likely) you just happened to have hooked every fish in the area the day before. Actually, the fish probably haven't moved very far at all, but anything weather-related could have forced them deeper, or if you lost your current, the fish probably aren't positioned like they were when you were hammering them. Your goal should be to figure out what changed and then work from there.

One old-timer tournament guy had this to say: "Take a breath. You're thinking WAY too much! When the fishing sucks, fish what you know."

In other words, he was saying to fish what you are confident with, what you fish well, and what your gut instinct is telling you...a "go back to the basics" approach, if you will. And understand that the "basics" can mean different things to different anglers. For some, it may be to fish a fluke in and around shoreline, or just off-shore structure and weeds. For others, it may be fishing French fries s-l-o-w-l-y and patiently.

Understand here, too, that patience is not always a person's strong point--I happen to know someone like that; he's the one putting this blog post together. For some of us, life is good. We're fishing, not working. We're not starving, nor do we depend on our fishing to feed us. We're out there enjoying life and the outdoors. Catching fish is a bonus.

"When all else fails, there's always the dynamite in the rod locker" is something I've heard countless anglers joke about over the years. I don't honestly believe anyone ever would seriously consider turning that statement into a reality. Instead, I tend to believe any angler would be far more inclined to develop a no-nonsense solution to the "when all else fails" dilemma--along the lines of what already has been discussed here, or perhaps something similar to what pro angler Mike Iaconelli describes as his "panic box."

This 3600 Plano box, which is actually labeled "panic box," contains four types of baits, all of which Iaconelli used early in his fishing history, when he fished more just to catch fish, rather than to catch bass specifically.

First is the 4-inch finesse worm, which Iaconelli feels "is probably the most versatile plastic worm ever designed." Second is probably the most basic plastic lure ever designed: the grub. The third type of bait--the one that probably gets the most laughs of the four--is the good old in-line spinner. The last lure you'll find in Ike's panic box is the hair jig, which he usually uses in conjunction with some type of pork trailer.

"When the pressure is on," assured Ike, "these four baits can save your day. All of them can be put in a small box and stored for an emergency situation. Whether you're a tournament angler or a recreational fisherman, you never want to get skunked. These baits definitely will help you put some fish in the boat."

And who knows? Maybe you'll just get lucky like one guy I read about online. He was fishing a tourney that started at 1:00 and didn't catch his first (and what turned out to be his only) fish until about 6:00. He still hadn't thrown any of his confidence baits at that point. Instead, he was sticking with the same crankbait with which he had started. Suddenly, the lure bounced off a tree limb and was gobbled up by a nice 3.86-lb. bass. As it worked out, that fish earned him 3rd place and big fish.