BassFan Q&A
Ike's Analysis: What Happened in '07?

Photo: BassFan Mike Iaconelli sees a silver lining – it was one of his worst seasons, but he still made the Bassmaster Classic.

Pro anglers, like other athletes, have their ups and downs – the good years, the great years, the so-so years and the bad years. And that all works on a sliding scale. A "bad" year for a top angler might be a "good" or even "great" year for one of the broom-wielding basement sweepers.

In that context, Mike Iaconelli's 2007 season falls somewhere between mediocre and bad. Sure, he made the Bassmaster Classic after he finished 28th in the Bassmaster Elite Series points. But 28th is a long way from 1st, which was his final points position the year before.

And 21st – where he sits right now in the BassFan World Rankings presented by Tru-Tungsten – is a long way from 2nd, where he started the year.

Things looked promising enough, when he started the year with a 2nd at the Amistad Elite Series. But he failed to check in the next four events, and things just continued to spiral downward. Check out his finishes, starting with the most recent:

> Lake Toho: 69th
> Lake Dardanelle: 31st (Major)
> Potomac River: 32nd
> Lake Oneida: 10th (Major)
> Erie/Niagara: 51st
> Lake Champlain: 62nd
> Grand Lake: 18th
> Smith Mt. Lake: 18th
> High Rock Lake: 16th (Major)
> Lake Guntersville: 64th
> Clarks Hill: 64th
> Clear Lake: 56th
> California Delta: 54th
> Lake Amistad: 2nd

In the Q&A that follows, Ike talks about the above performance record, and analyzes why 2007 was so different from 2006. He also talks about his sponsors, a failed marketing alliance, and how he plans to fish the Classic.

BassFan: To talk about your year, have you looked hard at it yet? Analyzed it?

Iaconelli: Absolutely. You always think about it as it happens. One thing you always try to do if you have a bad tournament is analyze it, learn what you can from it, and go on.

It seems like this year, the bad tournaments kept coming and coming – or maybe mediocre's a better word for (them).

Now what's nice is I can sit here and reflect on the entire year. I've obviously been getting a lot of questions about this, but I think the biggest thing is somebody usually wants to point the blame to a single reason, saying: 'Were you busier?' or 'What did you change?'

You know what? I didn't do anything differently. I fished the exact same way I always fish. I used the same practice strategy. I put in the same hours. So nothing changed. It was just one of those years.

Was it one of those years where the decisions were bad, or was it more like a lost fish, or some bad luck here and there?

It's one of those things about fishing, where maybe you cast left instead of right, or lose a key fish here and there, and everything didn't click. Maybe if I'd cast to the left instead of the right, I'd have landed that extra 1 1/2-pound fish.

But that's fishing. That's how I'm looking at it, and I'm not letting it get me down. I won't change my strategy. I'll go out next year, continue what I've been doing, and not change the way I fish.

So what do you take away from this year, in terms of turning things back around next year?

I think fishing's like any other sport. We're athletes, and we're human. I think there are a few standouts in every sport, obviously, but for the vast majority of us, it's still just fishing.

It's not brain science. It's not rocket science. It's fishing, and sometimes you just don't know it all. Sometimes you make the wrong decisions. The biggest thing, I think, is the ability to get around that and go on. This is not what I consider my first bad season, and it won't be my last moving on.

Hopefully I won't have another bad year for another 10 years – hopefully never. But what you have to do – what I have to continue to do – is take something from every tournament, a tidbit. If it's a mistake, learn from that. If it's a success, learn from that, and add it to the repertoire.

You get better with age, and that's how I'm trying to approach it. And I'm trying to take it in stride. The silver lining is that it's been one of my worst years, and I still made the Bassmaster Classic.

So how bad is your year when you still make the Classic?

Those tournaments where you didn't make the Top 50 and didn't fish day 3 – were those close shaves, where an extra fish would have put you in, and maybe further up? Or were you just not on them at all?

This is kind of the strange thing. Looking back, I don't know why it turned out like it did. Once an event started, things just didn't fall into place. And lots of times, I was one fish away from fishing the next day.

And that extra day is so important, because I've always been someone who's better as an event goes on. Clear Lake this year is a great example. The first day I had 13 pounds and I was nowheresville. The next day, I figured it out, caught 26 pounds, and just missed the cut.

That happened over and over again. It's hard to put a finger on, and I don't think there's any one reason. It's just that the fishing pieces didn't line up exactly where I wanted them to.

– End of part 1 (of 1) –