Photo: BassFan.com Seeing his uncle battle cancer inspired Mike Iaconelli to fish well again.

Has Iaconelli Found The Zone Again?

Thursday, February 14, 2002

From the minute he hit the pro ranks a few years ago, New Jersey's Mike Iaconelli was one of the hottest pros in the country. Consider:

> In the 1998-99 season he fished the Eastern Invitationals for the first time and came in 11th. He just missed making the BASS Masters Classic. So what did he do? He went out to the B.A.S.S. Federation Championship on the Red River, and won. He went to the 1999 Classic (lower Mississippi River) convinced he could win, and finished an amazing 6th.

> The next year he hit the BASSMASTER Top 150s and continued his hot streak. In the first tournament (St. Clair) he finished 20th. The next event was at Lake Champlain, shortened by one day because of weather, and he won it. Two tournaments later he finished 2nd at Toho. He ended up 4th in the B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year standings -- as a rookie -- and 2nd in the Eastern Invitationals. In the 2000 Classic, he finished 10th.

The Slide and the Cause

But then Iaconelli started to slide, though you couldn't tell right away. In the first Top 150 of the 2000-01 BASSMASTER season, he finished 5th on the Potomac River. Then:

> Lower Mississippi River -- 108th
> Mobile Delta -- 75th
> Toho -- 59th
> Toledo Bend -- 47th
> Wheeler -- 28th

Just when it seemed like he would crack the Top 20 again, he finished 129th at Tennessee's Douglas Lake.

Last season he wound up 44th in the AOY standings and 95th in the Eastern Invitational standings. Certainly that wasn't rock bottom, but it was a far cry from the way he started his pro career. So what happened?

"I started that season off with a bang," Iaconelli said, "but right after that tournament I ended up having a really bad tournament. Sometimes I think we tend to get in a rut, and it has a snowball effect. When you're succeeding and making the right decisions, you keep making them. You build on the right decisions.

"But it works in reverse too," he noted. "When you make bad decisions that's okay because you can learn from them, but you have to start making the right ones again.

"After I had a few bad tournaments, instead of analyzing them, sitting back and getting into my groove, I started trying too hard. A lot of times that makes things worse," he said. "What happens is that you start to doubt your decisions and you lose confidence, and when that happens you're in trouble. It starts to mess with you mentally."

Inspired by His Uncle

Without exception, there's some catalyzing event that breaks athletes out of slumps. It could be one good tournament or something else entirely. In Iaconelli's case, it was his uncle.

"My uncle was the turnaround for me," he said. "He's always been a big supporter of me, but the reason I think I kicked into gear was that early last year he found out he had cancer -- Hodgkins lymphoma. He battled it and now is in remission.

"That whole thing was an inspiration to believe in myself and get my confidence back -- to get back to where I know I can be. That was kind of the start of it."

Iaconelli said that right after the Red River BASSMASTER (November 2001) is when he felt like he started making the right on-the-water decisions again. "Over the last three tournaments my confidence began to build back up."

Out of the Rut

"Sometimes when you get in those ruts, it's the worst thing that can happen," he said. "You need to find yourself again.

"Almost every fisherman goes through ups and downs. Hopefully I learned enough from the down I went through that I won't get into it again. I like to be pretty constant.

"This is only my third year doing this, so I'm confident I have a lot to learn. That's all you can do -- just try to keep learning."