This is the February 1010 installment of the The Duckett Exchange, a regularly scheduled column about competitive fishing. Written by Boyd Duckett, a former Bassmaster Classic champion and the all-time B.A.S.S. single-season earnings leader, the column addresses issues and trends that affect anglers at every level of competition. In addition to competing on the ESPN Elite Series Tour, Duckett is also a popular a public speaker and successful businessman. He is the owner of Southern Tank Leasing, an Alabama-based company with terminals all over the Southeast and Midwest, and Duckett Fishing, a rod manufacturing company that produces MICROMagic rods. His pro fishing Web/Blog site can be found at
www.boydduckett.com.
Time for the Bassmaster Classic. It’s the Super Bowl of fishing, the seventh game of the World Series. All or nothing. I know all those descriptions are probably clichés, but winning the Classic is what we live for. So, yes, it’s our Super Bowl.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some extra excitement and some pressure because the tournament’s at Lay Lake , where I won in 2007 - and I’d be running from the truth if I said I’m a darkhorse underdog this year. I’d like to be an underdog; it’s a lot more fun that way. But I have to face the fact that a lot of people expect me to do well in this event.
And I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit that I expect to do well.
There are obviously a lot of great, great anglers in the field, and many of them know Lay Lake backward and forward. I do, too. That means it’s about a lot more than just getting in the boat, looking for the right spot and seeing how they’re biting.
Getting Ready for “Water Chess”
In the past, I’ve called fishing “water chess,” because I believe that’s what it is. In chess, you have to beat the board and your opponent. It’s the same with us, we’ve got to keep focused on all those intangible things that are happening with the environment - the chessboard. We've got to constantly ask ourselves: What is the water temperature? What is the spawning cycle? What times of day will the fish be moving? How deep are they? Would a drop shot work right now? Are they going to move to the shoreline?
The list of questions is almost endless.
But just like a chess player, sometimes you’ve also got to be conscious of what your competitors are doing, because you know for sure what they’re going to do. For example, every angler that’s ever fished a tournament knows the feeling of finding the perfect area only to discover somebody else with an earlier launch time has parked right where you think you need to be.
I think this year at the Classic we’re going to have even more mind games going on than usual, if that’s possible. I’ve been talking to other anglers about this, and everybody is wondering what the cold weather we’ve had in Alabama is going to do to us – or maybe I should say, what’s it going to do to the fish?
I live in Dempolis, Alabama , and we’re accustomed to generally mild winters. I told Gary Klein the other day I don’t remember a time in the last 20 years when French Creek on the Warrior River, which is near my house, was frozen over. But it happened this year. The water is in the 30s, and many times this time of year the water would be in the 50s.
Gary and I were talking about what effect this might have on the development of the fish’s egg sacks. Will the fish truly have the same urge to spawn? Or maybe the fish’s body will be on a different clock. What if the fish reacts like it’s February 1 or February 5 instead of February 19? That kind of thing gets into your head because you have to think that way, and you have to plan for that possibility.
Last year at the Red River, I had Plans A, B, C and D. This year we might all have to have Plans E through J.
Consistency from Start to Finish is the Key
And just like any other event, one good day probably won’t win it. You’ve got to have a big day, maybe even two. But for sure, you’ve got to be consistent from start to finish, and that’s tough to do when you have to change on the fly.
There’s a fine line between adjusting and over-thinking. Having patience is important, but you’ve got to be smart. Anglers that win tournaments get in a groove where they can confidently walk that balance beam between over-thinking and making the right adjustments.
You’ve probably heard anglers, as well as athletes in other sports, say that you can’t win an event on the first day but you certainly can lose it. That’s why you’ve got to be consistent from start to finish. The perfect example of how you can let things get away from you is what I did two years ago at Hartwell.
I was defending Classic champion and I was coming off a great season. I was full of confidence, and I put together a tournament plan that I was confident was good enough to win. I found this fantastic creek. As big a lake as Hartwell is, I found a creekbed that had an army of four-to six-pounders – and nobody else had it.
Although I wasn’t depending totally on that area, it was Plan A. But on the first morning the temperatures dropped to about 30, and it started raining and sleeting so hard that it muddied the entire area and drove out the fish. To put it in its simplest terms, Plans B and C weren’t good enough, and I didn’t adjust on the move the way I needed to.
