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This is the
July 2010 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. When you are tournament fishing, expectations are important. You have to set reasonable expectations in your head and do everything in your power to meet or surpass them. In the end, if you don’t meet your goals, then you need to re-figure what you were doing to start with.
For me, the last month or so has been a great example of that. I’ve had two good tournaments and a really bad one. In all three cases, my performance met my expectations.
First, let me tell you about the good ones.
I entered the last two Elite Series events of the regular season with the pressure on. I had to have two solid finishes to secure a place in the Bassmaster Classic. I was outside the cutline before those two tournaments, and I had to catch them to get into the Classic.
The good news for me is that I did catch them. The tournaments were at Kentucky Lake and Fort Gibson Lake. At Kentucky Lake I finished 19th. I was 12th at Fort Gibson Lake, and in the end I moved up from out of the cutline to 25th in the Angler-of-the-Year standings, which put me at least 12 spots above the Classic cutline.
I’ve been asked lots of times how it is that I’m able to go out and fish good when the pressure is on. (I’m skipping the part about how I had two terrible tournaments earlier in the year, and those tournaments cost me a chance at making the top 12, which was my original season goal.) 
Anyway, back to why I was able to end the season on a good note. There are lots of reasons, but one of the main ingredients is that I went into the tournament expecting to do well. It wasn’t that I had the best spots on either Kentucky or Fort Gibson lakes; I just knew going into the two events that I almost always know how to fish within my base of knowledge and catch them when I have to. So when the pressure’s truly on, I have a clear head and a gameplan, and that means I can be a solid stick.
The Fort Gibson tournament was especially nice. If you followed that event you know that high water on the Arkansas River forced BASS to move the tournament from the river to Fort Gibson. The change meant that we were fishing on a reservoir nobody was prepared to fish. I had been pretty excited about fishing the Arkansas River, but I was equally happy to go onto a lake where we were all on a level playing field. All local help went out the window.
It should be noted that with a few exceptions, many of the top anglers on our tour were at the top of the leader board. Skeet Reese and Kevin VanDam and Gary Klein, for example, were all in the top 12. Great anglers tend to adjust.
That was a great tournament.
Almost all the time, I go into an event with an expectation of where generally I should finish. And as often as not, that’s what happens. The only places this year that I missed badly were at the Classic, where we were all surprised that the fish were only biting in one area – Beeswax Creek – and at Smith Mountain Lake. Smith Mountain is a place I've fished well in the past. I'm comfortable there. But I got in a bad rotation on the water and nothing worked. I had good areas, and I knew where the fish were. But I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I had to do over, I would fish it the same way, and I would still expect to finish in the top third of the field.
The point is, when you’re fishing a tournament trail, you have to prepare for each event to the best of your ability - and then you have to set reasonable expectations.
With the regular Elite Series season over, a lot of anglers from our tour and from the FLW were at Cherokee Lake last week for the first Professional Anglers Association event of the year. To say the least, the conditions were not good. I practiced for three days at Cherokee, and on two of those days I didn’t so much as get a bite.
In my defense, I wasn’t the only one having trouble. We were on a lake in July, with temperatures in the nineties most of the time – and that’s when they weren’t over 100. Man, it was hot and miserable. And to say the fish weren’t biting would be an understatement. There were pro anglers out there ready to pack their gear and go home.
I determined the day before the event started that I had no expectation that I was going to do well. Had I caught a bunch of fish, it would have been a surprise.
Needless to say, I missed the cut.
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