Lucky Or Not, Salewske Enjoying Tour Success This Time

Did Rusty Salewske expect to fare this well in his second go-around on the FLW Tour following a 4-year absence? Not really.

"I try to never expect success, but I'm always trying to reach that level," he said. "It's kind of a self-check deal – I never want to get too high or too low.

"I can say that at every tournament we've had this year, I've thought after practice that I was going to catch them. But I don't like to go in with any expectations other than that I'm going to work hard."

The 44-year-old Californian, who still works full-time as a grading and paving contractor, is in 4th place in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race. He was a distant runner-up to Bryan Thrift at Norman and his other two finishes were 24th and 20th.

"I think there's been some luck involved, but I hope I can look back in 2 years and say that I wasn't actually lucky. I'd like to be able to say it was because of me learning to read the lakes better."

A Different Scene

Salewske, the 5th-place finisher at last year's Forrest Wood Cup after qualifying via the 2008 Western FLW Series, competed on the FLW Tour in 2004 and '05 without a great deal of success. The following year he focused on the Series (the one season that it was a national circuit) and posted two Top 5s in five events.

The Series was split into two regional divisions in '06 and, primarily due to his business commitments, he opted to stay close to home. He turned in three solid seasons and won last year's stop at the California Delta.

His success at the '09 Cup was the final impetus he needed to rejoin the Tour. He'd originally planned to fish the Western Series this year as well, but his "other job" has kept him out of both tournaments that've been staged thus far.

The Tour is a different environment than when he left it 5 years ago. Most notably, there's an off-limits period and official practice is now limited to 4 days prior to the event (with a 1-day break between the last practice day and day 1 of the tournament).

That's much more to his liking.

"I think it's great because I was one of the unfortunate ones who couldn't live at the lake for a month," he said. "I was only going for 3 or 4 days anyway.

"I don't want this to sound cocky, but I think it's more of an intuition thing now once you get there. I've never started a practice real strong, but by the third day I've started to figure out how I might catch them and things have gotten better as the tournaments have progressed."

Hite was Right

Salewske has formed an alliance with fellow Western pro Brett Hite for this year's Tour. They travel together and share all practice information.

Salewske said the input of Hite, who has more experience fishing the Eastern part of the country, was invaluable en route to his 2nd-place finish at Norman.

"When I got there and saw the lake, in my mind I pegged it as strictly a dock-fishing lake," he said. "At first I didn't see the hidden structure – the little breaks and things like that.

"The first day of practice he fished a crankbait and I fished a jig, and I probably caught a little bit better weight, if not more numbers. But knowing how much confidence he had in the crankbait, it forced me to try it on the second day."

He ended up catching all of his weigh-in fish from a couple of muddy creeks on a white Lucky Craft RC 2.0.

"I think I still would've caught them off the docks if it had stayed sunny, but we basically had low-light conditions for 3/4 of the fishing time in the tournament. And on the days it was sunny, it was really windy.

"When you've got wind and stained water, you don't need shade."

Not Thinking about Cup

Salewske badly wants to compete in this year's Cup at Georgia's Lake Lanier, but he has to qualify first; he has no Western Series exemption this time. To do that, he must stay in the Top 30 in the AOY race through the final two events at Ouachita and Guntersville.

He finished 22nd in the '07 Cup at Ouachita and is at least a little bit familiar with Guntersville – he locked down to it in the '05 Tour event at Wheeler, but ended up 149th.

In any case, he refuses to talk about Lanier until he's punched his ticket.

"I've got (Hite) and my wife on me constantly, saying we need to figure out where we're going to stay and all that. I tell them, 'Hey, just leave me out of the conversation.' I feel like I'm going to jinx myself and I don't want to go there.

"I'd like to have one more good tournament, and then I could play the last one kind of loose. But we'll have to take it like it comes."

Notable

> Tour events normally cost him 6 work days at his contracting gig, but he spends most Tuesdays prior to the events (the mandated off days after the official practice session) on the telephone dealing with matters pertaining to it. "My phone is open until the tournament starts, and then I cross my fingers for the next few days," he said. "But I've got people working for me who can handle whatever comes up."

> He won't hearken back to the '07 Cup when he returns to Ouachita later this month. "I'm going to completely ignore how I caught them when I was there before and go out and see what the lake has to offer."