By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Golf, tennis, bowling and a myriad of other individual sports have coaches who work directly with athletes on a one-one-one basis, attempting to help them capitalize on their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Bass fishing has never really had anybody like that.
Until now, perhaps.
Marty Stone, the ex-pro angler who's now an MLF commentator, is seeking to become the first to fulfill that role. With his combined experience as a tour-level contender and intent observer of the world's best in his broadcasting gig, he views himself as uniquely qualified.
"Our sport, unlike any other, doesn't have a coaching system," he said last week. "The guys who run the high school and college programs, I commend them for everything they do, but they haven't been there.
"The idea with this is for the angler to get in the boat with me and I'm not going to be fishing. That'd be like a baseball player going to a hitting coach and the coach gets in the cage and takes swings for him. The way it works is the coach is outside the cage watching the player swing and giving feedback based on the knowledge he's gained.
"The angler's current level doesn't matter," he continued. "It could be a high school kid looking to move up to the BFLs, a Toyota Series or (Bassmaster) Opens guy who wants to make the Bass Pro Tour or the Elites or an Elite guy who's been struggling and wants to find a different way to expedite the process. I honestly believe I can shorten their learning curve by 2 to 4 years and if that's what happens, it could be the best money they've ever spent."
Where over What
Bass fishing is different from other professional sports in that the mechanics of a swing or a ball-release aren't usually the determining factors in success or failure. There's relatively little separation among professional rosters in that regard.
It's not so much a matter of what an angler does as where he (or she) does it. Via his MJS Academy, which will offer one-, two- or three-day sessions on the water with the proprietor, Stone's main objective will be to help students break down a body of water quicker and more efficiently.
Stone was a two-time winner during his tour-level career.
A two-time tour-level winner and the runner-up for the 2005 Bassmaster Angler of the Year title, Stone said his knowledge of how to accomplish that has increased exponentially since he started commentating on MLF events more than a decade ago. He spent much of that time in a boat during the Cup events and got an up-close look at how the best in the business go about it.
"A word that's used a lot in this sport is 'pattern' and that just drives me nuts – I'm not buying it," he said. "A pattern was Denny Brauer flipping a black and blue jig on the ends of docks all over a lake.
"Probably 95 percent of all tournaments today are won in areas and my goal is to teach anglers to find multiple areas for multiple days of fishing. It's a numbers game and you have to make enough stops and enough casts, but they have to be productive stops and productive casts. Even when you're not catching them, you have to be thinking about okay, what's next? If I can take an angler out in my boat or theirs and put them in a controlled environment, I can have him breaking down water faster than he ever has in his life."
If a student wants to boost his or her skill level in a particular technique, that's fine. Even if it wasn't his own forté as a competitor, again, he's intently studied the top flippers, dropshotters, sight-fishermen and crankers in the game.
"There's no telling what I would've given to have the knowledge that I have now when I was 25 years old," he said. "Looking back on everything I've seen since 2010 (when he started broadcasting) ... I know now how good those guys are and why they were so hard to beat. I've discovered a lot of places where I went wrong."
Plenty of Nearby Options
Stone, a North Carolina resident, has numerous lakes (Kerr, Falls, Gaston, Shearon Harris, etc.) within an hour's drive of his home to utilize for the sessions. For those opting for multi-day packages, he has a guest house on his property and will provide meals, along with dinnertime discussions about topics the student is eager to learn more about (i.e. acquiring and keeping sponsorships, maximizing travel budgets, the importance of a strong social media presence, etc.).
The cost is $2,000 per day.
"I get it – that's a lot of money," he said, "but tour-level entry fees are 5-grand-plus. This is something unique and different and if it saves those 2 to 4 years on the learning curve, it's the cheapest investment you can make with the biggest return in a short amount of time.
"With what you have to do to fish at the top level, there isn't a lot of patience. In most cases you have a 3- to 5-year window to really make a mark, or else you're just a grinder out there and you'll never be impactful."
He can run sessions at any time of the year so long as they don't interfere with his broadcasting schedule, which will consist of about 80 days in 2023.
"I'd like to do a few this fall and winter and then some more in the spring and early summer," he said. "There's a whole lot more than 80 days in the year and I should be able to work something out to fit just about anybody's schedule.
"Some people might ask if I'll travel to them and the answer to that is no for now. One reason is my schedule, but another is that I want to put people on bodies of water that they probably haven't been to. On their home body of water, they're borderline too comfortable."
Those interested in learning more about the MJS Academy can click here.
"This isn't for everybody; for instance, it's not for somebody who's look for me to take them fishing," he said. "But I do believe it can benefit some anglers. My hope is that I can help make the sport a little better and possibly leave a mark one angler at a time."
