There's no question that Alton Jones' 2011 Bassmaster Elite Series season was successful. He easily qualified for the 2012 Bassmaster Classic after sitting out that event this year and finished among the Top 10 in the Toyota Tundra B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year (AOY) race.
There's also no getting around
the fact, though, that the campaign didn't end well for the veteran Texan. He was atop the points list for much of the year and in position to claim the long-coveted AOY, but he finished up with placements of 88th at Murray, 69th at the Arkansas River and 66th at Wheeler to drop to 9th in the final tally.
"Momentum is a very powerful thing in our sport," he said. "After (the Arkansas River), when it was obvious that I was no longer chasing the AOY but I already had the Classic made, it became really hard for me to bear down and do what it took to get the job done.
"Also, the (fishing) plans I was putting together just weren't working out. You get yourself in a little hole and you start fishing a little more risky – taking some chances that you wouldn't usually take instead of fishing what the tournament gives you. That's not always a bad thing, but in these instances it didn't pan out."
No Company, but No Fish
Discounting the fact that he didn't win at the St. Johns River after leading the first 3 days, things couldn't have gone much better for Jones than they did over the season's first five tournaments. He posted four singe-digit finishes and a 16th during that span.
His first bad outing was a real doozy, though, and it changed the campaign's complexion. Instead of being in the AOY driver's seat, the bomb at Murray turned him into a guy holding onto the rear bumper with just one hand.
"Murray was kind of funny because I had one of the best practices of the year," he said. "I've seen that before, though, where a great practice is followed by a bad tournament, or conversely, where a terrible practice is followed by a great tournament. Actually several of the places I'd found that were on my rotation, guys made Top 10s off of them.
"I had a good early boat number (for day 1), but I selected the wrong school to go to first. After that, when I tried to move to other places, there were always guys sitting on them. It was just one of those deals."
He was still tied for 2nd in the AOY race (with eventual winner Kevin VanDam) when the circuit moved to Little Rock for the second-to-last event. A four-fish, 5-pound bag on opening day there extinguished all but the last flicker of his points-title hopes, so he threw all caution to the wind the following day.
Jones logged a 14th-place finish in the 2009 Classic at the Red River and is looking forward to returning to that venue.
"I locked through to another pool, which was a place I hadn't pre-fished at all. That wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, but I'm pretty sure staying where I was would've kept me higher (in the standings). I was determined to catch a big sack somewhere that other competitors weren't going. I found some stuff I had to myself, but unfortunately the bass weren't going there, either.
"It's easy to get caught up in the emotion of a bad day and try to get it all back at once. Sometimes it works, but usually it's not the right thing to do. It is a lot easier to do, though, when you've already got the Classic made."
Focus is Forward
Jones' late-season slide not only quashed his AOY hopes, but it also knocked him out of a guaranteed slot in the Toyota Trucks All-Star Series (the two post-season events that are just for fun and money this year – there are no title implications attached). He still hopes to gain one of the four berths determined by fan voting, the winners of which will be announced tomorrow, but his chances are dimmed by being in the same region as the ubiquitous Skeet Reese.
"I'll be watching my computer closely on Wednesday," he said. "I'd love to be there and get a chance to win that."
If he doesn't make it, he won't spend much time looking back at what might have been. Instead, he'll turn the bulk of his attention toward next year's Classic at Louisiana's Red River. He won the sport's premier event in 2008 at South Carolina's Lake Hartwell and is happy he'll get the chance to prevent a Kevin VanDam three-peat.
He plans to make several visits to the Red over the ensuing months before it goes off-limits in December.
"It's a shallow-water fishery and I love fishing shallow in the early spring. I had a decent finish there last time and I caught a 20-pound sack on the final day.
"Having a tournament under my belt there has helped me learn the personality of the waterway. It's a lot better fishery than I'd judged it the first time."
