By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
Here are some numbers you don’t often see associated with Anthony Gagliardi’s name: 100, 72, 123, 120, 95.
Those figures represent a string of his finishes during a five-tournament stretch between March and June last year. Add them up and you get an average of 102 -- not exactly what BassFans have come to expect from the South Carolina FLW pro and certainly not what Gagliardi expects from himself. The mid-season swoon led to an 88th-place finish in Angler of the Year (AOY) points, the worst result in his 12 years as a Tour full-timer.
With five finishes of 95th or worse on his 2011 ledger, he’d just as soon write the season off as a learning experience.
It wasn't a total loss, though, as he hasn’t let the struggles spill over into this year. In fact, he seemed to snap out of the funk toward the end of last year and the momentum has carried over into 2012. He’s the early leader in the race for FLW AOY through two Majors and has himself in position to punch a ticket to the Forrest Wood Cup later this summer after a 1-year hiatus.
“Short of winning one, I couldn’t have asked for a better start than this,” he said. “I had a good feeling coming into this year just based on the schedule. It looked like it was going to set up pretty well for me.”
Keeping his Edge
Gagliardi has endured his share of struggles and enjoyed great successes since he burst onto the professional fishing scene in 2000 as a fresh-faced college grad with a mechanical engineering degree from Clemson University. After finishing progressively better in the standings his first 3 years on Tour and about breaking even on expenses, he was ready to head out into the job market before the 2004 season. That’s when his father convinced him to fish the Tour one more year.
Later that spring, he was holding a giant check over his head with the number “$100,000” on it after winning the Kentucky Lake FLW Tour. He hasn’t looked back since, capturing two more Tour titles and the 2006 AOY crown. One of his keys to managing the ebbs and flows of tournament fishing is not getting too high when things are going good and not imploding when he goes through stretches like he did last year. It’s sometimes a struggle, he admits.
“Guys like us are so competitive by nature,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to get in your head and start to make you think. It rattles you. It really does. There is a fine line, no matter how successful you are and no matter how well a season is going. You can have just one bad tournament and you can feel like the world’s about to end. It’s just one of those things that comes with the competitive nature that most of us share.
“That’s something I’ve struggled with my entire career. I can have 3 good years in a row and then something doesn’t go quite the same and it’ll really bother me. That’s the case with a lot of guys, but it’s just one of those things you have learn to deal with and put behind you just like any other sport. Guys are going to have ups and downs. If you go back and look at people’s careers, the guys that were the most successful are probably the ones who were able to deal with those kinds of things better mentally than others.”
Last year started on a positive note with a 15th-place finish at the Okeechobee FLW Tour Open. His first four Tour Majors, however, didn’t go near as well as he logged a 100th-place finish at Beaver Lake, then a 72nd at Hartwell, a 123rd at Chickamauga, and a 120th at the Red River. A 95th at the Potomac River Tour Open in June wrapped up the worst five-tournament stretch of his career.
“Based upon my career up to that point, I feel like I’d proven what I could accomplish, but for myself I was extremely disappointed in last year,” he said. “Looking back at some of the tournaments, there were a lot of things that I can’t explain as to why I didn’t catch them. I can’t put my finger on why I didn’t catch them in a certain event. It’s just one of those things I’m going to try to (wash) my hands of and just forget about. Obviously, the way this year has started off there’s no point in dwelling on last year. I just need to forget about it and leave it in the past.”
Gagliardi was frustrated by his struggles last year, but he's been able to rebound.
He began to turn things around with a 20th-place finish at the Kentucky Lake Tour Major 2 weeks after the Potomac event. Before cashing another check at the Pickwick Tour Major (46th place), he took home the title -- and championship belt -- in the 2011 Ultimate Match Fishing competition in July. His roller-coaster season ended with a 95th at the Lake Champlain Tour Open and a 4th at the Lake Guntersville Tour Open.
“There were some things like that that would happen throughout the year,” he added. “I’d had some decent practices and something would happen weather-wise and then there were some practices where I didn’t catch them at all or never found them. It just all culminated in the middle of the season. Around Kentucky Lake, I started to feel like I was pulling out of it. I was starting to have better practices and actually putting it together in tournaments.”
Getting Away
Typically, Gagliardi likes to turn off his fishing switch once the season ends. Last year was no different and he was maybe more eager to get away from the rods and reels than usual.
“At the end of the season, a lot of guys will organize everything and get things ready or put them away,” he said. “I don’t do that. When I put my boat in the garage, I’m pretty much done with it. I don’t want to see it for a while.”
After a couple months, he starts toying around with tackle and begins the slow burn toward the next season. This year, that process started a little earlier.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m out on the lake fishing,” he said. “I just started out in the garage earlier this year just going through tackle. I do that every year. That’s how I kick the season off -- I’ll start going through my stuff and see what I have and it puts me back in that frame of mind and my tournament mode. I just did that a little earlier this year. I ordered some baits a lot sooner than usual and started looking at other tournaments and ordered stuff for them. Maybe that made a difference or got me a little more focused than last year.
“I just wanted to make sure I came out and tried as hard as I did those years when I was first getting into it. I didn’t want to put any less effort into it. Maybe that happened last year and I just didn’t realize it. But especially this year, I made sure I’m putting more effort and more focus into the start of this season.”
Schedule to his Liking
When Gagliardi saw the fisheries on the 2012 FLW Tour Open and Major schedules, he liked what he saw. Sure, there were lakes that he’d struggled at, but there were a few he felt very confident about and nothing can pull someone out of a slump quicker than a shot of confidence.
He cashed a check at the Okeechobee Tour Open in February before redeeming himself with a 5th at the Hartwell Tour Major last month. He followed that up with a 6th-place showing at the Table Rock Tour Major. His earnings through two Majors this year have nearly doubled what he earned in last year’s six Majors. His recent hot streak pushed him up 42 places to 60th in the latest BassFan World Rankings.
“There are a lot of places we’re going that I feel like I can be really competitive at,” he said. “I can’t be more pleased with how it started out. I feel good about the rest of them, to be honest.”
He’s anxious to get to Beaver Lake in a couple weeks even though it’s a place he has historically struggled. His best finish in eight Tour events at the northwestern Arkansas reservoir is 30th in 2006.
“It’s one of those places where it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been there, you don’t really learn it,” he said. “How many ever years I’ve been fishing on the pro side I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything about the lake. That’s always the wild card, but I still feel pretty good just because of the time of year that we’ll be there. I feel like I should do well there.”
Another solid finish should put him in a good position to earn a berth in the Forrest Wood Cup, the missing jewel from his résumé.
“That’s very important,” he said. “I absolutely hated going to the Cup last year and not competing. It really, really bothered me. I’m on a pretty good little run now. It started late in the season last year at Kentucky Lake and it’s just kind of continued. I don’t want to say it’s a run. To me, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing now. I don’t feel like I’m fishing above my head or anything. I feel like this is what normal is.”
