I’ve heard it said that successful athletes must have a short memory. It's been widely reported that the best competitors have an ability to completely forget about their most recent failures and be ready to compete with a clean slate in the next event.

I’m not sure I fully agree.

Following a 98th-place finish – my lowest in several years – at the recent FLW Rayovac Series on the California Delta, I feel there’s more to learn from embracing failure than renouncing it.

The End of the World

The most difficult aspect of my life to reflect upon, and share with readers, is definitely finances.

We are all aware of the financial trials that tournament fishing forces us to endure. It’s undeniably a very difficult sport to break into, as well as survive while you’re in the thick of it.

Though I’m fortunate that I now make all my income through fishing-related avenues, and it may look good on paper at the end of the year, it all doesn’t come in the form of a consistent paycheck every other week, like a “regular” job might produce. This means that for some parts of the year I’m living pretty thin until I get my next boost, which is something that I look forward to remedying in my future through better budgeting and planning. But for now, I’m learning the hard way.

Going into the Rayovac I knew that it would be an event where the ice was pretty thin, and my feet were feeling pretty heavy.

After being wiped out by my monthly fixed expenses, I was left with a bank account that held considerably less than what I’d consider an adequate amount to fish a tournament of this magnitude comfortably. In fact, I was having a hard time working the numbers where I could actually fish the event at all with the price of gas taking off like a Von Braun rocket in the state of California.

Each of my 3 days of practice I’d cringe as I watched the gas pump count down to my financial demise. It was all I could think about.

I was truly lost, on a labyrinth-like fishery that could swallow even the best anglers while on their "A" games.

I kept telling myself that I needed to make a check or else! A poor finish truly felt like it’d be the end of the world.

The result was a highly ineffective, unorganized attempt at a practice session, where I was left with some mediocre areas, a poor game plan and a weak grasp on how the tides affected big fish movements.

Tide-Chasing Blunders

The first day of the event started with some rookie tidal-fishery mistakes. I’d found a spot close to the launch at Frank’s Tract where I thought I could catch a few keepers on a spinnerbait or flipping a Z-man Flappin CrawZ, but I found that the bite in that area was pretty poor during the high-slack tide. Instead of heading farther west where the tide started to flow on the outgoing, I decided to run east and try to catch fish on the way to Stockton. Unfortunately, I was essentially following the slack tide, and thus following the worst fishing tide of the day.

Once I got to my area in Stockton, and finally found myself fishing a more productive tide, I started catching fish and got into a little groove throwing a green pumpkin Z-man Elite ChatterBait. I ended up culling multiple times, but I was finding that all my fish were between 2 1/2 and 3 pounds, which are pretty much considered worthless on the Delta. Instead of making a move to find a much-needed kicker, I wasted my time culling by ounces. I finished the day in the middle of the pack with 13-10.

The next day I knew I needed around 17 pounds to finish with a check, and I knew I couldn’t catch that in my Stockton area. So what did I do? I went back to Stockton.

I figured that I could catch 12 pounds real quick and then go look for a big bite. The only problem was that area was only good on the outgoing tide, and I went there first thing during the incoming. I didn’t get a single fish in the boat there for several hours until finally the tide started to flow out.

With little time to spare, I caught three fish quickly on the ChatterBait, but then instead of trying to find new areas with bigger fish right away, I started visiting some of the areas I found in practice that had similar-size fish. It was like I was trapped in my own mind, looking at myself from behind bars, making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

I ended the day with 10 pounds and plummeted to 98th lace.

Still Here

I was such a wreck all week that I’d actually envisioned myself at the end of the tournament if I didn’t cash a check. I envisioned how disappointed I’d be and how absolutely destroyed I’d feel. It was one of the first times that I ever thought about myself losing instead of winning.

You want to know what the funny thing was? I didn’t feel any of those feelings. Sure, I was a little bit disappointed, but I came back to the weigh-in, knew I’d sucked big-time, and I didn’t feel destroyed in any way. My mom, who was watching me weigh in still was proud of me. My fianceé, who was there also didn’t leave me. My boat was still mine. My truck wasn’t being towed by the repo man. The San Andreas Fault was still intact. There were no asteroids plummeting toward Earth to bring about the planet's demise due to my awful finish.

I was whole, and there was no place that I’d rather be.

Easy Money (Or Not)

One of my favorite audiobooks I have on my iPhone, which I haven’t listened to for a long time, is called The Psychology of Winning by Dennis Waitley. One analogy he shares about the fear of failure really hit home with me after this event.

Waitley makes you imagine a sturdy 10-foot board placed across two 5-gallon buckets. With you standing on one end of the board, on the opposite end a $10 bill is placed. You, or just about anyone else for that matter, would have no problem walking that board to collect your new Alexander Hamilton.

Then he asks you to imagine the same scenario, but instead of two buckets, the board is placed across two skyscrapers. The task is the same, the reward is still the same, but the fear of failure will make it more difficult to complete the task.

If taken literally, the second scenario obviously has a deadly outcome if you fail, but to me he is talking about the mental obstacles we put in our own way. Those skyscrapers are really just metaphors for our own way of making tasks we know how to complete seem much more complex and difficult.

I now know I’ve been making things more complicated than they really are over the last few years.

Thankful For Failure

In the end, I’m really happy that I just plain bombed in this event because if I had barely squeaked into a check I may have never had my little “aha” moment.

As my life gets more complex, I’ve found that I'm getting more and more away from my old self, who didn’t want to fail, but also wasn’t afraid of it. My job now is to continue taking care of my business and not worrying where the chips land at the end of a tournament.

I think it's good to remember events like this one, because it held some very important lessons that I look forward to carrying down the road. Though I've heard that athletes need to forget about the fails, I have also heard that failure is the catalyst to success.

I think I agree with the latter.

(Miles "Sonar" Burghoff is a graduate of the University of Central Florida and an aspiring tour pro. To visit his website, click here. You can also visit him on Facebook and Twitter.)