You've got a shot at winning the biggest tournament of your life. Maybe it's a club championship. Maybe it's a BFL, EverStart, Open, Federation divisional or the ABA championship. Or maybe, if you're Takahiro Omori in 2004, it's the Bassmaster Classic.
Omori led day 1 of that Classic, on South Carolina's Lake Wylie, and knew he had a shot at winning the one event he'd dreamed of winning ever since he heard about it. But on day 2, he broke off two good fish (one a 5-pounder).
Not entirely unusual – but then again, he was flipping with 58-pound Sun Line braid, a line he'd been using with success for 10 years. So what happened?
In a word, adrenaline.
It was a unique situation, he noted. Normally, "you won't get that much pressure on your performance," he said. "But this is the biggest tournament of your life and you have a chance to win it." When you know that, the potential for "overpowering," as he calls it, goes up.
His first mistake that day was with the 5-pounder. He said: "It was a summertime fish, (which) fight so hard, but I wanted the fish in the boat in a hurry. So I tried to swing in a 5-pounder in the middle of the fight, one of the most stupid mistakes you can make. But I was excited."
In other words, he "overpowered him. I broke my braided line I'd been using 10 years, and I never broke that line like that. It was not a line flaw. It was an amateur mistake."
The other fish he simply broke off on a flip. Now bear in mind that he's fishing 58-pound braid and he weighs all of 135 pounds.
Again, adrenaline.
Omori said: "I saw I had a very good chance to win the Classic, the first time I had a chance in my life to win, so I overpowered him. I was so excited, I jerked harder."
His solution was to move up one line size. He switched to 65-pound Sun Line braid, which he's used for the past 12 months, and "never broke one off again.
"In a situation like that, things like that will happen," he said. "I'm happy that mistake didn't cost me winning the biggest tournament of my life."
And he's thinking about going back down to the 58-pound line. "I learned from that mistake," he noted.
He cautioned BassFans in a winning situation that "if you go one size up, you might not get a bite. The bait might not act the same. My advice would be to calm down and do your job."
On the other hand, if adrenaline is a factor, you might want to go up in line size, at least temporarily.
