By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
“Success consists of going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill.
By most accounts, no angler has ever fished a perfect tournament. Odd as it may seem, even tournament winners probably harbor a regret or two about decisions made along their path to victory.
Each day for a pro angler is comprised of a series of decisions, from off-the-water preparations at home to the pre-tournament practice session and all the way through the competition. The daily sequence of decisions and each outcome derived from those decisions lays the foundation for the next sequence of decisions.
“Where should I start today? How long should I stay if I don’t get a bite?”
“Should I fish the areas where I’ve caught them before at this lake?”
“What if the water rises or drops?”
Those are just a small sample of the myriad choices anglers are faced with during the course of a tournament. Some decisions result in positive outcomes, some don’t.
BassFan connected with a handful of pros from various circuits to go over a single decision they’ve made during the 2020 season that still irks them and wish they had a chance to do over.
Next Time: Bridges
After the Bassmaster Classic this year, Shane LeHew told fellow Elite Series angler and pal Brandon Cobb that if the circuit ever goes back to Lake Guntersville that Cobb needs to insist LeHew make the numerous causeways and bridges on the lake part of his game plan.
During the Classic, LeHew overlooked the bridges in favor of a main-lake eelgrass pattern – and it haunted him as fellow North Carolina angler Hank Cherry utilized the bridge pattern en route to a wire-to-wire victory.
“(The eelgrass thing) was good in the mornings and evenings (in practice),” LeHew said, “but during the middle of the day it was tough to get bit.”
In hindsight, he realized the water conditions weren’t ideal for the grass bite to be on the upswing.
“With all of the current and cold water, I don’t think I was around enough fish or any big ones,” he said.
Were he given a shot at doing it over again, LeHew said he’d venture more into the creeks and probe the shallower water.
“Those fish, for whatever reason, stay pretty shallow in those creeks year-round,” he said. “Some guys caught them flipping wood and laydowns and that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
LeHew caught limits weighing 11-10 on day 1 and 12-10 on day 2, but missed the top-25 cut by a little more than 1 1/2 pounds. He was one of two competitors in the Classic to miss the cut despite recording a limit on days 1 and 2.
He relied on a vibrating jig and a Berkley Frittside crankbait when targeting the eelgrass.
“It’s so easy to look back after seeing and hearing how guys caught ‘em,” LeHew said. “I think Guntersville was just tougher than most of us were accustomed to or were expecting it to be.”
Should’ve Stuck Around
The Harris Chain FLW Pro Circuit in February was far from what many in the field had hoped for or expected. High winds wiped one day off the books and made it a three-day event. Then a cold front presented another set of challenges for the final two days.
For Alex Davis, his decision to fish a small area for just 90 minutes a day over days 1 and 2 of the tournament is something he regrets in hindsight.
“It was a 100-yard stretch,” Davis said, noting he fished in the same area during the 2018 FLW Tour stop at the Harris Chain. “It’s a in big, general community area, but there weren’t a lot of boats there.”
Not only did he catch all of his weight there both days – 10-09 on day 1 and 9-01 on day 2 – he had some missed opportunities that would’ve seen him finish much higher than 95th.
“I lost the biggest fish I’ve ever seen there,” he said. “I hindsight, if I had just stayed there and gone back and forth, there’s no doubt I would’ve gotten a check.”
Instead, he stopped there for a while as it was part of a rotation of areas.
“I knew it was good when I found it, but it was a bit of a time crunch with the lock and me wanting to fish four or five other places,” he added. “It really kicked in in my head around the middle of day 2. We had the day cancelled, then a cold front came in. I know I only missed a check by a little bit, so if I had stayed there longer on day 1, the outcome would’ve been different.”
Jesse Wiggins learned a hard lesson this season at Lake Okeechobee about when to stay in an area verus when to leave it.
C'mon, Mother Nature
Like Davis, the decision Austin Felix wants a mulligan on occurred in a Florida tournament where weather played a huge factor.
Felix, a newcomer to the Bassmaster Elite Series, saw the first two days of competition erased by high winds. As a result, the tournament started on a Saturday, marking three days since any of the anglers had been on the St. Johns River.
“I practiced all tournament with the idea that even with bad weather, we’d still have the event,” Felix said. “We were supposed to have 20-mile per hour south and west winds for the first two days, so I based my practice around that and focused on stuff that was out of the wind and still had fish.”
When the tournament finally commenced, Felix discovered many of the spots he intended to fish were unfishable due to the sheer lack of water. The persistent south wind had swept a massive amount of water out of the system.
“If there was one thing I’d have changed, I’d have spent more time fishing the man-made canals,” Felix said. “They’d be deep enough to handle the water level changes and I think there were enough resident fish in those things that I’d not have to worry about groups of fish coming and going.”
After catching four fish for 8-12 on day 1, he added three for 3-09 on day 2 and finished 64th in the only regular-season Elite Series tournament held so far.
“It was just so difficult because I didn’t know how the whole river system worked,” he added. “I didn’t think all of that water would leave. It took me longer to check areas where I’d gotten bit and realize it was useless. I had to bail and it was not an easy time to just figure things out on that lake.”
Left Too Soon
At the same time Davis was struggling with his decisions at the Harris Chain of Lakes, Jesse Wiggins was grappling with how much time he should be spending in Taylors Bayou at Lake Okeechobee during Stage 2 of the Bass Pro Tour.
The weather at Okeechobee wasn’t markedly different than it was to the north so after Wiggins elicited a few bites in that area during the second day of the Group A qualifying round, he opted to leave rather than stay and see what else he could’ve put on his ScoreTracker.
“I just had a feeling I could catch enough to make the cut, but I just gave up too quick,” Wiggins said. “Something in my mind was telling me not to leave, but I did anyway being the super pro I am.”
His self-deprecating manner aside, Wiggins now wishes he had stuck around much longer seeing that Jordan Lee fished roughly the same areas the following day and won the Group B qualifying round. Wiggins caught 11-03 over the first two days and missed the Knockout Round cut by more than six pounds.
“If I’d have stayed in there and gone further, Id’ have caught them,” Wiggins said. “Mark Davis and I were the only ones in Group B) to go in there and I would’ve had it to myself. I knew in my mind I shouldn’t be leaving. I made the halfway right decision by going there, but I didn’t stick it out. It’s not like I had elsewhere to go that was better. If I stuck it out, I would’ve definitely caught enough to make the cut.”
