By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor


Brandon Coulter has been competing at the top level of professional bass fishing long enough to know that mistakes are made along the way. Either through the course of a day on the water, a week at a particular tournament or over the grueling months that make up an FLW Tour or Elite Series season, somewhere along the line hiccups happen.

Realizing where his missteps occurred and how to offset their negative effects and ensure he doesn’t repeat those mistakes is all part of the challenge of being a pro angler. While he did achieve his goal of qualifying for the season-ending Angler of the Year Championship, Coulter says he made a couple costly errors during his initial Elite Series season in 2015 that ultimately derailed his push to qualify for his first Bassmaster Classic.

Coulter went into the AOY Championship at Sturgeon Bay in September occupying the 39th spot in the AOY points. He was THE bubble boy – the last guy inside the projected Classic cut at the time. He’d also never been to Sturgeon Bay and his 47th-place finish (out of 50 competitors) there effectively ended his Classic bid and left him with kicking himself well into the offseason.

“I made a lot of mistakes,” he said when summarizing his entire season. “No doubt, it’s a night and day difference from FLW. When you fish on tour for a while, you get comfortable and you think you know how to do this and do that.

“I made some real bad mistakes, but the good news is I barely missed the Classic, I made the AOY (event) and I didn’t fish out of my mind at all. It was a good season with bad mistakes so it gives me some confidence going into next season.”

He said there was a lot to digest in making the transition from the FLW Tour to the Elite Series, but he thinks he’ll be much stronger and better prepared for the 2016 season when it gets going in March.

“It’s a transition with sponsorships and commitments over on the FLW side and the crowds and fan base,” he said. “A lot of things are different. The first Elite Series event in my life was the morning of day 1 at the Sabine River. I’d never been to an Elite event. I’d been to the Classic, but didn’t go to the lake or weigh-in – I was just at the show – so I was seeing everything for the first time. It was awesome and fun but definitely some lessons learned.”

Sturgeon Stumble

Coulter banked paychecks in five of the eight regular-season events, but finished no higher than 21st in any of them. He had a triple-digit dud at Lake Havasu that yielded zero points and a 90th at the St. Lawrence River that he bounced back from with back-to-back Top-40 finishes to close the year.

His thought process heading into the AOY Championship was he’d hope to figure something out once he arrived in Door County, Wis. He did little to no advance prep work on Sturgeon Bay prior to the event.

“I didn’t even know where Sturgeon Bay was,” he said. “I didn’t do a good job of reaching my goal there. I did zero research on Sturgeon Bay. It’s the dumbest thing. I saw it on the schedule and I thought I’d make it based on points, but how stupid is this? I felt liked doing research would jinx me. How dumb is that? When I got there, it was too late.”

He failed to bag a limit during any of the 3 days of competition, wound up 47th and tumbled seven spots to 46th in points.

“I needed to have three good events to get there and I did that,” he added. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared when I got there. That was the biggest thing.”

He was hampered by a lack of research at Havasu as well.

“I didn’t realize we’d only have 1 1/2 days of practice instead of the normal 2 1/2,” he said. “That was a bonehead move. I should have known better, going there with no research and on a short practice. I should’ve at least known the traditional seasonal patterns.”

Always Learning

Coulter said it was refreshing to visit different venues this year and he noticed that it wasn’t as easy to rebound from a bad day as it was on the FLW Tour.

“The biggest difference that I saw is with the smaller field, you couldn’t miss this year,” he said. “If you got buried, you stayed buried. You didn’t see the 70th to 30th jumps you might with 130 boats.

“When you miss, it’s really hard to come back. That’s something I’ll take to next year. Maybe I’ll have more bailout plans or stay-in-the-hunt kind of spots. I didn’t miss much on those good finishes, but the other three were just tanks. I wasn’t even in the ball game. If I can clean those up and stay in the hunt, I feel good about next year.”

He said his expectations will naturally increase for the upcoming season, which means he’s having to put in additional time this fall and winter refining some skills and staying sharp mentally.

“The goals increase,” he said. “We don’t do this without trying to get better. One thing I know is I’m not the only one who’s raising expectations. I know I better get better in a lot of areas.”

He spent a good bit of time throwing a topwater bait this fall – “One thing I was dreadfully bad at was frogging,” he said – on several Tennessee River lakes. He’s not quite where he wants to be, but he feels more comfortable now heaving a hollow-body bait around.

“I live to close to Chickamauga, Nickajack and Guntersville,” he said. “I must’ve taken a dozen trips with nothing but a frog rod this fall. It’s a technique I’ve always struggled with. I wanted to fish it in all different water conditions. I changed sized and colors. I had a plastic bag of them in my boat and they had melted together. That’s how bad I was at it.”

Notable

> In an effort to cut down on fatigue next season, Coulter is going to fish with both right- and left-handed reels. He’s planning to order a complete set of each from 13 Fishing, his rod and reel sponsor. “I used some left-handed reels for a weekend this fall and I felt a lot better,” he said. “I probably looked like an idiot setting the hook, but it’ll be a soft implementation. I’ll do it in practice until I’m comfortable with it. I lost some fish toward the end of the year and I’m not sure if it was related, but I know I was more tired. It was a lot more grueling schedule.”