Inner Fire Dimmed
Swindle's Tough Year Started With Lost Hartwell Hawg

Photo: ESPN Outdoors Gerald Swindle caught some good fish this year, but there were many others that didn't make it to the weigh-in stage.

The Classic came during a tough time for the usually brash, outspoken Alabamian. His brother Tony, just a few years older than him, was nearing the end of a losing battle against pancreatic cancer, and he had doubts about whether he should even be at South Carolina's Lake Hartwell.

But Tony was one of his biggest fans, and he'd urged Gerald to go and try to win bass fishing's biggest prize as sort of a final gesture to him. The younger brother badly wanted to make that happen, but there came a point on day 2 when he knew it wouldn't.

"The second day I flipped one up that was 6 or 7 pounds on a jig, and it popped off," he said. "From right then on, I knew I didn't have a chance. Any small opportunity that I'd had to win, I'd just lost it.

"It was a very bitter pill to swallow – you can't make up a 7-pounder. A little bit of the fire went out."

More Rough Patches Ahead

Swindle went on to finish 53rd in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race, which will cause him to miss the 2009 Classic after six straight appearances in the event. In addition to his brother's illness (Tony died in mid-March during the season's third stop at Toho), he also became embroiled in a protracted dispute with a former sponsor.

And quality bites that didn't make it into the boat were a constant theme throughout the year.

"It was the most trying, difficult season I've ever fished through," the 2004 BASS AOY said. "When it was over, I felt like I'd been in a 12-round boxing match with a world champion and I'd had one arm tied behind my back.

"Every tournament was a fight and I had to battle and claw and scratch. Nothing came easy and I didn't get any big breaks. But I learned a lot about myself through all those situations and I went through a maturing thing as both an angler and an individual. Fishing is important, but it's definitely not the most important thing in life, and there's times that the breaks just don't go your way."

He wouldn't use the off-the-water issues as an excuse for all the lost fish and his on-the-water decisions that didn't pan out, but they undoubtedly had a negative effect on his ability to focus.

"I had plenty of opportunities to catch them, and I didn't execute well. There were a lot of times in the early season when I just wanted to be home, and after I lost my brother I'm not sure I ever got back to where I was as (mentally) strong as I was the year before.

"I was trying to put all that stuff behind me and do better, and maybe I was trying too hard."

Photo: ESPN Outdoors Swindle's never been shy about clowning for a camera, but 2008 wasn't the most jovial of seasons for him.

At this time a year ago, Swindle had heady goals for the 2008 campaign, like winning two Elite events and capturing his second AOY. But perhaps due to the learning and maturation experience that the season became, his objectives for 2009 are much more subdued.

"I don't want to miss the Classic again," he said, "but my No. 1 goal is I want to fish each day of competition with an open mind and stay focused. That might seem like a small goal, but if I can do that over 35 or 40 days, it could turn into a huge accomplishment.

"I know if I do that, I'll put up big numbers."

He plans to rekindle his alliance with his old pal Marty Stone, another angler who's had his share of struggles recently. They've remained close friends, but from a fishing standpoint, they'd gone in different directions over the past few years.

"We still talked, but not as much as we did in the past. Next year we'll get back to working together a little more. We'll go back to old times and lay it all on the line and see if we can get some breaks going our way again.

"I'm not looking for him to give me fishing spots, and he won't be looking for that from me. But if you've got someone you can trust who tells you he went out and flipped docks for 5 hours (during practice) and didn't get any bites, that helps. There are a lot of guys who team up, like Mike McClelland and Jeff Kriet or Davy Hite and Scott Rook, and have a lot of success. I'm looking forward to getting that going."

If he can get anywhere near the number of bites he did this year, he should have no trouble making it to Birmingham for the 2010 Classic.

"I'll get some downtime in the woods alone (while deer hunting this fall) and get my feet back under me, and I should be fine for next year. I don't think I'm in a slump because it wasn't like I wasn't getting the bites – I had chances to do better.

"I'm trying to get to the point where I find something positve in everything that happens. But even when I was in a bad frame of mind, I still got bit."

Notable

> Swindle likes the makeup of the 2009 Elite Series schedule. "The last couple of years was a lot of football (jig) dragging, and that's not my biggest strength – a lot of times I had to fish a little slower than I would've preferred. But it looks like this year we'll get to mix it up a little bit."

> He said it'll probably be quite some time before he can shake the recollection of that Classic giant that got away. "You should never dwell on lost fish, but the memory of that one is very vivid."