This season Alton Jones was one of only two pros (Tim Horton was the other) to pull off something very difficult, and that was to move up in the Top 10 of the State Farm-BassFan World Rankings over the course of the season. Jones started in 8th and rose to 3rd in the world by season's end.

That's difficult because at that level everyone is fishing so well that a slip can send an angler plummeting, and to climb you must fish a little better than the others in the Top 10, all of whom are already fishing well.

Jones did it by focusing on one fish at a time. That was his mantra during the season, and it worked so well for him that he won one event (the Clear Lake Bassmaster),

finished in the Top 20 another four times (the Top 10 twice, including at the Bassmaster Classic) and had four more finishes in the 20s. That enabled him to lead the BASS Angler of the Year (AOY) race for a couple of events, though he ultimately lost to Jay Yelas by 9 points.

In other words, it was exactly the season you'd expect for the world's 3rd-ranked angler. Here's how it looked (all events not marked FLW are Bassmaster Tour events):

1/2003 -- Harris Chain of Lakes -- 82
1/2003 -- Lake Okeechobee -- 82
1/2003 -- Lake Okeechobee FLW -- 29
2/2003 -- Lake Seminole -- 23
2/2003 -- Atchafalaya Basin FLW -- 73
2/2003 -- Toledo Bend -- 33
3/2003 -- Lake Eufaula -- 15
3/2003 -- Lake Murray FLW -- 93
3/2003 -- Santee Cooper -- 7
4/2003 -- California Delta -- 25
4/2003 -- Clear Lake -- 1
5/2003 -- Lake Hamilton -- 26
5/2003 -- Alabama River -- 19
8/2003 -- Louisiana Delta (Bassmaster Classic) -- 7

Rough Start

As you can see, he didn't exactly hit the ground running. Two 82nd-place finishes at the first two BASS events got him thinking.

"It certainly was a disappointing start to my season, and believe me, I would've loved to have 9 points at any of those tournaments to be able to catch Jay when I needed to," he said. "But I think sometimes adversity can help a competitor dig down and find 'it.' Disappointment is very motivational, at least that's the way it works for me.

"Don't get me wrong. I wasn't hoping for (disappointment). But it made me realize that I was behind the 8-ball, and that if I was going to salvage the season, I would have to work a little harder. I kind of shrugged off the Harris Chain because you can have one bad event. But when you have two -- I had to do some soul-searching."

After the second 82nd at Okeechobee, "something changed about my philosophy," he said. He realized that he had to focus on catching one bass at a time. "Quit worrying about limits and winning, and just catch the next bass. That became my motto for the season."

New Approach

Had he ever taken that one-fish approach before? "I had taken it at individual times during a particular tournament, but I never really approached it as a way I had to (fish) in my career," Jones said.

"Fishing has so many distractions. You have sponsor commitments, and dealing with the public and the media, and all are important. But what that 'catch the next fish' philosophy allowed me to do was back off those distractions almost at the flick of a switch and say, 'Okay, this is what to focus on.'

"It's important to know when you flip that switch what you're trying to accomplish," he noted. "A lot of times you think that's winning a tournament or winning AOY. But I realized (this season) that lot of times when you catch the next fish, all those other things happen automatically."

Looking At the End of the Race

Jones led the BASS AOY race going into the last event, the Alabama River Bassmaster. It was a tight race, but he was the man to beat. Asked how he felt about how it ended up, he said: "I'm a competitor. I would have loved to have won AOY. I led it going into the last event, and I had just enough of it to taste what (winning) it would be like.

"That's always been a goal in my career, and you don't (get a chance to win it) many times in your career. So to see the door open and ready to walk through -- it's a little disappointing when you see that door open and then get it slammed in your face.

"But that's just a testament to how good a fisherman Jay is," he noted. "The big players make big plays at big times, and he established himself as a big player."

Jones added that he has no regrets about how he fished the Alabama River event. "I heard stories about the big schools of spots that live behind the dams, but I also heard that under regular conditions you can't get there. So my gameplan going into (practice) was to go downriver the first day and upriver the second day, and make the decision from there."

On the first day of practice he went downriver and got "a lot of quality bites on a jig. So I opted to spend practice learning that area well. I thought I could win AOY there. But we all know now that the river continued to rise. It hurt the pattern downriver, but it helped the guys upriver. It made that water more accessible, even without a jetboat.

"I made the right decision based on the practice I had," he said. "The weather didn't cooperate. That was just (something) in God's hands, not mine.

"And I have a hard time pointing to the last event. I had so many opportunities throughout the year to make up those 9 points. It just shows you there's room for improvement."

Looking at 2004

Having tasted what an AOY win would feel like, Jones said that winning it is a "stronger goal moving forward than ever before." To that end, and to improve his fishing generally, he's working on his technique.

"Whether it's missing strikes, cranking tight to a shallow log with a Big O or I'm having trouble making a certain presentation, that's what I'm working on in the off-season," he said. In addition to focusing on the next fish, that's a another philosophy he'll be fishing with in 2004: making every cast count.

"This is a game of seconds," he said. "People wonder why you need a 225 Yamaha to run 75 mph, and it's because every second counts. An additional cast in a day for me is a potential 5-pounder, so I want to use my time more efficiently than ever."

Part of doing that is fishing both tours. This year he started out fishing both, but ended up fishing only three of the six regular-season FLW Tour events. He knew he'd miss the Beaver Lake FLW because of the conflict with the California Bassmaster events, and then decided to sit out the remaining two FLW events to focus on the BASS AOY race -- which he now says was a mistake.

"Once I quit FLW, my performance on BASS went downhill. So I'm noticing in my career that I perform better going from one tournament to the next. I get in a groove, and I tend to do better under pressure.

"So I'm fishing both (tours) because I love to fish and because my career tells me that I do better under those circumstances."

Notable

> "I think it's also important to keep in mind that in fishing -- being a game of decisions -- that you can have the right philosophy, outlook and lures, and still have a bad tournament or two," Jones said. "It's not an exact science. A lot of things are out of my control as an angler. That's one thing that keeps my faith so strong. There's so much room for faith (in fishing), for trusting in God's provisions." He noted: "I'm a competitor and want to win, but I'm also trying to keep an eternal perspective."