Been to the School of Hard Knocks? If So, You're in Good Company

In case you haven't heard, so have the likes of bass pros Kevin VanDam (right), Mark Menendez, Jordan Lee, Todd Faircloth, Jason Christie, and Marty Robinson.

At the beginning of his illustrious career, VanDam struggled with trusting his instincts.

"When you start to trust your instincts and see the rewards you can reap doing that, it builds your confidence to do that more," he said. "A lot of times, you'll go to an area where you practiced and had some success, and it just doesn't happen. You know in your gut that things are different. It's cloudy now, was sunny then, windy now, and was calm then. Just because it happened before doesn't mean you can make it happen again. So, instead of milling around and wasting an hour of your time, when your instincts tell you that you have to make an adjustment, or change location or lure presentation, learn to trust your instincts."

Mark Menendez remembers incorrectly tying a Palomar know that proved costly to the Kentucky pro when fluorocarbon line was introduced.

"When you tie the Palomar knot, and you slip the bait back through the loop you created, that loop needs to stay on top of the knot," said Menendez. "When we first got fluorocarbon, it was very brittle, and if that loop were on the side of the Palomar knot, it would cut through it every time. That cost me thousands of dollars and multiple points over the years."

Menendez also learned to keep fresh oil in his motor's lower unit and check for fishing line in his prop after a lack of boat maintenance cut into his fishing time during a 1995 Bassmaster Top 150 on Wheeler Lake. While making a long, cold run one morning, his engine shut down.

"The lower unit locked up completely, and it was from fishing line in the seal," said Menendez, who ended up finishing 53rd in the tournament. "If you lose that lower-unit seal from line and run your grear grease too long, it will fail you."

The Alabama pro, Jordan Lee, experienced the worst tournament of his rookie year in the Bassmaster Elite Series when he finished 99th at Lake Havasu. His downfall was failing to prefish for the event and do his homework on the lake.

"I didn't get a real good idea of what I needed to do to be successful there," he lamented.

Todd Faircloth, from Texas, recalls many instances early in his career when he failed to manage his time on the water efficiently. Many times when he would be 20 miles up a lake, he'd decide he needed to run 30 miles the other way.

"If you're fishing a tournament, whether it be a one-day or jackpot deal, or a four-day event, you have to be able to manage your time," he said.

Early in Jason Christie's (left) career, he would fret during a tournament if he missed the morning bite, and his confidence would be shot the rest of the day.

"I expected it to happen early in the morning, but now I have seen it happen in the last 30 minutes where I have culled all of my fish, or I catch a couple of big ones and go from being in the bottom of the pack to leading," he said. "The last hour or the last minute is just as important as the first minute. You are just as apt to catch a 7-pounder on the last cast as the first, or any one in between.

"You have to be able to do it efficiently, and what I mean by that is try not to be so spread out. Don't spend your entire time running for so many miles. Some of my most successful tournaments have been when I found an area of the lake or a section of a creek and just learned more and more about it as the tournament progressed," continued Christie. "I think I'm practicing more efficiently now than earlier in my career, when I wanted to know what was going on from one end to the other. Now I don't care what is going on at the other end; I just want to learn about this end of the lake. I will spend all of my time here and be more efficient with my time."

Early on, during a Bassmaster Elite event on Kentucky Lake, Marty Robinson learned the importance of fishing an area at the right time. He had caught fish during practice at a spot around noon. Come the morning of the competition, he was so pumped up about fishing there that he ran to it first thing in the morning...and he came up empty-handed. Robinson then saw a fellow competitor fishing the same spot in the afternoon, and he found out that the other guy caught several bass there.

"It blew my mind," said Robinson, who finished 38th in the tournament.

Some colleges now offer bass-fishing clubs for aspiring pros, but a majority of today's competitors had to learn things the hard way...through the School of Hard Knocks.