By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

For all that Luke Clausen has accomplished in his bass fishing career, he came into the 2014 FLW Tour season thinking he could take a divergent path to success compared to previous seasons.

He was coming off consecutive Top-10 finishes in the Angler of the Year race in 2012-13 by employing his usual read-and-react-to-the-then-and-now-conditions approach. Somehow, he had convinced himself there was a different, potentially better, way to go about it. Maybe it would not be an easier route, but possibly one that would lead to greater outcomes.

He was sorely mistaken.

While he managed to earn a check in five of six events, he had just one Top-30 finish and wound up 39th in points, missing the Forrest Wood Cup by 1 point. It was his lowest points finish since 2006 and snapped his streak of eight straight Cup appearances. In his estimation, it might as well have been by 100 points.

"Some people would be like, 'Oh man, I missed it by a point,'" he said. "To me, it comes down to the whole year. Whether it was one point or 100, I don't feel like it should be that close if I'd had a decent year."

On a recent salmon fishing outing at home in Washington, he was asked about his season by others in the boat.

"I had a hard time recalling whether I'd had a good year," he said. "I couldn't really remember where I finished where. It was all self-inflicted, though. If I thought about it hard enough, I could probably come up with some excuses, but what's done is done. Of course, I would've liked to have had better finishes. I just complicated it way more than I should have."

It's not often you hear a Bassmaster Classic and Cup champion question his own approach or make such drastic changes, but Clausen was hopeful it would lead to better outcomes.

"Some of the guys who are really good like (Jacob) Powroznik or (David) Dudley or (Steve) Kennedy are really great instinctive fishermen," he said. "They run around and figure them out. I just pushed myself to be more analytical."

Head Games

Clausen put a lot more effort into his preseason preparation than maybe ever before. He devoured as much information as he could find about the lakes on the Tour schedule. He ordered more and different baits, hoping to uncover those magic lures that nobody was thinking of throwing.

"Realistically, I'd have Tackle Warehouse boxes coming to my house a couple times a week with the more research I did," he said.

In the end, though, he thinks he wound up clogging up his own process, which is usually a simple, straight-forward approach that centers on the current conditions.

"I had read more and prepared harder for this year," he said. "I did more background research and bought a lot of baits, off the wall stuff and it ended up being a big waste of time. I fished pretty closed-minded instead of just going fishing with 10 rods on the deck.

"I had big, wooden rats and I was rigging up stuff because it looked good, whether it was a different crankbait or plastic someone had told me about. I had different colors, anything that was away from the mainstream of baits that usually win. It wasn't like I was out there throwing a tuna plug, but it might've been different from what people usually throw."

While he's been among the more consistent performers on the FLW Tour over the better part of the last decade, Clausen was going for it all and in the process lost sight of what had gotten him to where he is.

"I had too much going on in my mind," he said. "I was trying too hard. I cared a lot more this year. Usually, I catch as much as I can catch and see where I wind up. I put more pressure on myself, maybe because I wanted to win so bad. I spent more time on my electronics and tackle, and in the end it was just to make myself feel better.

"The season always felt like an uphill battle. I was never able to let my intuition take over. I was always fighting that and that was probably the most unenjoyable part of it. The funnest part of fishing is letting your mind go and trying stuff and going from there. … What I fish for is the bite, not the fight of the fish. I usually have my best results by going out and letting it happen.

"Next year, maybe I won't worry about it until I get there. I'll go to Walmart and get a map. There's so much to be said for that approach."

Eyes Wide Open

While the 119th-place finish at Sam Rayburn Reservoir stands out as Clausen's worst effort of the last 7 seasons, he was able get back to basics at the U.S. Open last month at Lake Mead.

"That was probably the high point of my year," he said. "It was the last event I fished this year and I borrowed a boat and just went fishing and had a Top 10. I guess it added a little more credence to the notion that was I was overthinking everything."

He arrived at Mead with limited tackle and even less information to go on. He had five reels and some baits in a carry-on bag and borrowed rods from fellow Megabass pro staffer Randy Blaukat to fish the tournament with. He fished out of a co-angler's boat and wound up finishing 10th.

"I proved to myself that you can subconsciously figure it out and maybe that's more powerful than research and who did what when," he said. "I need to go out and fish the way I fish. I need to do it my own way."