Since he started fishing the Bassmaster Tour, Texas' Todd Faircloth has quietly become an angler to watch.

He hit the Tour hot (10th in the points in the 1999-2000 season), finished 6th in the BASS points the next season and racked up six Top 10s in 2001: one on the Bassmaster Tour, one at the Bassmaster Classic and the rest in the Opens.

Then he finished 34th and 25th in the points the next 2 years. Not as good, but hardly terrible.

He seemed to be a steady, good angler whom everyone expected to take the next step. This year he took it, but in an unexpected direction: down.

On the 2004 Bassmaster Tour, he never finished above 58th and had three finishes below 100th – this by a guy who was pretty consistently finishing in the teens through 30s range. He ended up 166th in the points, his worst year by far and an obviously uncharacteristic one. What happened?

Too Much Looking?

"I can't put my finger on one particular thing other than maybe the way I practiced," he said. "I like to cover a lot of water in practice, and I really think I tried to look at too much instead of just picking an area of the lake and dissecting it. I'm type of person who likes to know what's going on from one end to the other, and in 3 days of practice it's just not possible."

But he was limited to 3 days last year too. What was different this year? "I don't know," he said. "I don't have an excuse.

"We fished a couple of lakes – Smith Lake and Table Rock – that don't suit my style of fishing. We had heavy rains and the lakes changed overnight. I didn't grow up fishing runoffs and I didn't know what to look for when it did that – it threw me a curve. But I learned some stuff, and read up on how the guys caught the fish.

"On the other hand, we fished Guntersville, which fits my style to a T," he noted. "Grass and lipless crankbaits – that's what I grew up doing. I was around the fish and around the guys who were doing well, but I just didn't dial into the exact deal that guys were catching them on."

The bottom line is that he has "no excuses. I just didn't catch them this year. Hopefully I'll jump back out of it and turn it around next year."

Drilling a Little Deeper

"It's just like an athlete," Faircloth said about his season. "An athlete gets in a slump or a team gets in a slump, and they just have a hard time fighting out of it. It seems like when everything is going right, you're making all the right decisions. And when everything's going wrong, you can't make a right decision.

"You more or less go on instinct when you're fishing good, and when you're fishing bad you second-guess your instincts, I think."

"But I don't want to seem like I have an excuse for this (season)," he reiterated. "I really don't. It's my own fault."

The pressure of having consecutive bad finishes is new to him. Asked if that messed with his head, he said: "Absolutely. You put pressure on yourself.

"I was stressed out about (making) the E50s the entire tour. I barely made it, and I was a shoe-in if I'd just had a decent year. I started thinking, Man, I'm not even going to qualify for the E50s. You're out there on the water and you're definitely thinking about that stuff. You try to block it out, but it's almost impossible to do.

"I've fished under pressure before," he said. "My first year on the tour I didn't have a whole lot of money, and I knew if I didn't do well I probably wouldn't be out there the following year.

"Fishing under pressure isn't something I do real well. I'm a relaxed-type person (which allows him to) go on my instincts and follow them. But this year I was second-guessing myself."

The last two events were better, meaning he at least got out of the 100s. Was it because the fish were coming into the spawn? "At Eufaula I caught them sight-fishing," he said. "At the Santee tournament I didn't catch them sight-fishing, but I was in the right area. I fished same water as Greg Hackney did, me and several other guys, but he was just clued in to what to do. I wasn't dialed in like he was."

The Opens and 2005

This fall Faircloth is fishing the Bassmaster Central Opens, like he does every year. He didn't get a check at the first one, but given how tough that event was he isn't concerned. "Right now I'm kind of relaxing, taking a break from it," he said.

He noted that there's no off-limits in the Opens, and he'll be taking advantage of that to revert back to his style of practicing more. "You have a lot more opportunity to look at an entire body of water," he noted.

After the Opens are over, "I'll take a break from fishing, work on my tackle, and analyze (the tour stops). I have a plan going into the Tour (as far as) how I practice. I'm going to study the map, pick a section and dissect an area instead of bouncing all over the place."

That's a different approach for him, and is the one thing he's taking out of this year's tough Tour season. Otherwise, "I'm just going to try and forget about it," he said. "It's over with, it's done, I can't change it. All I can do is try to correct it for next year and try to turn it around. I've been consistent over the past 4 years, and I don't want this one bad year to drag me down."

Notable

> As a Yamaha angler, he's fished a few FLW Tour events, but didn't this year because he didn't get back into that tour. As far as 2005 goes, he said: "I don't know if I'll be able to get in this year. But now that Skeeter is involved, I'm waiting to hear from them if they have any slots."