You, of all people, ought to know better than to listen to a bunch of dock talk. As your fellow veteran pro Mark Davis points out, "Dock talk is just that...talk...something you don't want to pay a lot of attention to. Realize, especially during a tournament, the guy who's telling stuff for everyone to hear is either telling a partial truth or is just outright lying. Even though the information given wasn't necessarily meant to deceive, when something is omitted, the result is just the same.
"I can make up a great story about how I'm catching 'em, and it might have a lot of truth to it," he says. "But, by leaving out one key element, it won't help you a bit. That's what I think most people in a tournament do when they're talking to a group of guys about how their practice day went. You can't blame them for not wanting to reveal secrets that might hurt themselves by helping others, but you can stay away from bait-shop chatter.
"If I had to give one piece of advice to everyone about bass fishing," Davis continues, "it would be to stick with what you know, or with what you're comfortable doing. If you've taken advice from some guy at the bait shop before you put your boat in the water, it might take you completely off the game plan you've established, or lead you toward doing something that you have absolutely no confidence in.
"Even when the tips are recent and from multiple sources," Davis contends, "the best information is obtained directly from the body of water you're intending to fish. The best pattern, or the best way to catch the most fish on a body of water on any given day, is seldom the way the tournament is won. There may be a real good way to catch a bunch of fish that everyone is doing, but the guy who wins usually will be doing something else.
"It might be close to what everyone else is doing, but he's found a little wrinkle or something a little different that gets the better bites. There is no substitute for the knowledge an angler acquires from spending time on the water.
"I would rather start from scratch to learn what's going on, rather than to take someone else's word for it," he says, adding that there's one exception to that rule. "Do enough research to determine the productivity of the fishery. If you can look at tournament results from that particular body of water, it will give you an idea of what sort of weight you need to be targeting.
"That sort of Internet research can be really helpful because you'll know where you need to be at in the grand scheme of things. On a big body of water, it might help to know which sections of the lake are most productive at that time," he says, "but again, finding out which part of the lake is hot is far different from information on what you need to be using when you get there."
Davis admits it is human nature to want to hear how another angler was successful. However, after a quarter century of chasing bass for a living, he's confident in saying, "Always stick to your strengths, and by all means, don't follow what the guy at the dock told you he did yesterday." (Photo courtesy Jay Kumar's 7/24/2018 BassBlaster)
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