One rookie who's been interesting to watch this season is Georgia FLW Tour pro Jason Meninger. He's in the middle of a Tour campaign that could put him on his home water, Lake Lanier, for this year's Forrest Wood Cup, and so far, he's right on track.

He has the FLW Tour's new 3-day cumulative-weight cut to thank for that. Without that crucial day 3, he'd have two mid-70s finishes on his sheet right now.

This year's Tour opener at the Red River was canceled, which meant that Table Rock was the effective start of the season. At The Rock, Meninger ended day 1 in 93rd, improved to 75th the next day, then rallied on day 3 to finish 33rd.

A few weeks later at Norman, he ended day 1 in 110th, improved to 74th the next day, then rallied once again on day 3 to finish 24th.



The rally at each Tour stop helped put him at 16th in the FLW Tour Angler of the Year (AOY) race with three events left to fish.

According to Meninger, both of his day-1 disasters were largely the result of nerves, which extended into a bad decision, which compounded into more bad decisions.

Day-1 Jitters

Meninger isn't exactly new to the game. He fished four full FLW Eastern Series seasons, and he's a partner in Adventure Advertising, which handles marketing and advertising for major companies involved in the sport. Still, he's a Tour rookie, and the whole experience takes some getting used to.

"It's been interesting," he said of his rookie campaign thus far. "I'm making it more difficult on myself than I probably need to, but I get nervous in these things on the first day. There's such a fine margin of error in these events – it can go either way with just a couple of decisions you make. If you start making bad decisions, it's easy to make more bad decisions, which leads to more bad things.

"I don't know what it is, but I get a little spun out on the first day – a little anxious."

Some of that's perhaps due to his practice style, he added. He "scrambles around the lake" during the official practice and "never feel(s) 100% confident" in what he finds. Thus, he's largely spent his day 1s fishing then eliminating the weakest pattern he found in practice.

"Then I'm able to regroup and settle down and just go with it the second and third day. What actually helped I think is that I fished the FLW Series. Until this year, the Tour was a 2-day deal. If it was still like that, I'd be sitting a lot further back (in the AOY race) with two 75th-place finishes. But fishing the FLW Series those 4 years has given me at least the mindset to go into these events and know I can recover from a bad day.

"These events are more a marathon than a sprint, and I think that mindset has helped me this first year on tour. And with the experience I gained in the Series, I've been able to kind of figure things out a little bit and not let bad decisions the first day just hurt me."

Rest of the Season

Meninger's next stop is Ft. Loudoun-Tellico 2 weeks from now.

As for the nerves, "I hope they go away," he said. "And I think they probably will."

As for making the Cup on his home lake – a lake where he finished 11th at the 2006 Lanier FLW Series (when the FLW Series was a single division composed almost entirely of tour pros), 25th at the 2006 Lanier Bassmaster Southern Open, and where he won the 2008 Camp Sunshine event – he's trying to put it out of his mind.

"I'm trying to not think about that right now," he said. "When I got done with (Table Rock) I looked and saw I was 16th and thought, 'Wow, that's great.' But I've got a long way to go. And these events can go either way. You can bomb really easily. So my mindset now is to stay focused, think about one event at a time and see what happens. If it's meant to be, I'll be there at the end. If not? Oh well, I'll have tried as hard as I could and fished the best I could.

"But my goal going into this season, and it didn't change after the first day of both tournaments, was to get into the Top 75. If you make small goals that are realistic every day, then you can realize them and review them and see if you can improve. It's worked out for me and my goal moving forward is the same – finish in the Top 75. That's my barometer. Hopefully it'll turn into something again."

Notable

> Meninger pre-practiced Ft. Loudoun–Tellico over Easter, something he normally doesn't do. His practice mostly involved driving, he said. He wanted to learn how to navigate and didn't want to trap himself into building memories that may or may not be there 2 weeks from now.

> He said the key factor in both his finishes this year has been a single bait. "Just about every fish I've weighed in the last two tournaments has been caught on a Jackall Flick-Shake. And I think it could play into (Ft. Loudoun–Tellico) too."

> During each of his remaining events, he'll be updating his FaceBook page with a video blog. He encourages BassFans to visit and interact.