"You haven't had a bite in a while; your back is hurting from standing all day; you're hot, tired, and/or hungry; and who knows whatever else may be going through your mind," they reasoned. "And now is when you will get the one bite that can make or break your tournament day. Too often, it breaks the tournament day."
As the one pro noted, "At 12 o'clock each tournament day, I tell myself, 'Let's refocus and get this thing done.' During the day, I take a minute to drink something or to eat a snack. I may think about relocating to another part of the lake, or maybe even refresh my thoughts on what I have been doing up until this point in the day. Everything or anything I can do to make sure I am just as fresh at 2 o'clock, as I was when I started at 6 in the morning is the goal. It's our job to keep our minds sharp and make good decisions."
Said the other pro, "I know that from the first half of the day until the last half, conditions on the water may change dramatically. So, I'll stop for a minute, look around, and decide what all has changed. I then determine what I need to do to adapt to those changes and fish hard, instead of just going through the motions of fishing the last couple of hours."
This fella went on to recount a 2017 tournament on Sam Rayburn Reservoir in which he had developed a pattern of catching a lot of bass the first thing in the morning and then catching them throughout the rest of the day for three consecutive days. However, on the fourth day, the wind switched and began blowing in the complete opposite way from how it had been blowing the first three days. The bass had changed from where they were, too.
He struggled that last day, especially in the morning. He wasn't getting nearly the number of bites that he had received the previous three mornings, and he wasn't catching as many big fish, either. He continued to move around, trying to find out where the bass had gone.
With 10 minutes left before he had to run back to the weigh-in, he went to a completely new spot that he hadn't fished during the tournament.
"I had found this place with my electronics but just hadn't fished it," he said. "The first bass I caught there weighed 3.5 pounds. Then I caught a 6-pounder. Catching those two bass in the last 10 minutes was the reason I won the tournament and took home $100,000. That scenario convinced me to fish hard every time during the last two hours. One or two bass oftentimes spell the difference between a bad day and a good one."
According to these two pros, "Fishermen are good at playing mind games. Anything that is within the rules to gain a competitive advantage is fair game, so why not try to psych out your competition? Usually, the older the fishermen, the harder it is to get under their skin. Once an angler sees he can get under your skin, the mind games will continue...not just from other fishermen, but what you will do to yourself, too."
While on the water, these two pros don't answer their phone. For the most part, they also don't read text messages or respond to them. They don't want to hear someone asking or telling them what they've caught. That information will be divulged at the weigh-in.
In their words, "Before you allow someone to live in your mind rent-free, you must decide if that person is worthy of free rent.
"Control the controllable variables, and prepare for the ones you can't. As an angler, you must always take into consideration the 'what if' factors of being out on the water. A lot of non-fishing things that mentally destroy anglers on the water are things that easily could have been avoided. Not preparing for the current weather is the most common culprit, including not having enough clothes to stay warm, or not having the proper rain gear to stay dry. All these things play a role in your success as an angler. Overlooking any of them is likely to come back and bite you."
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