I’ve been a professional fisherman for decades and still have bad events. We all go through it. We had a terrible event and beat ourselves up on the long trip home. But there are a few things I’ve developed that keep me from second-guessing myself. I’m still learning but getting better at doing this as I mature in my career.
The biggest thing is to analyze the event. It’s hard to do because we don’t want to think about “failure as humans.” But if you break it down and analyze it, you can learn a lot. Whether you use this information next week or next year, it does help you bounce back and not make those mistakes again.
Write down notes as you ask yourself questions: What did I do? What did the winners do? What adjustments didn’t I make? Was it a color thing? If so, why didn’t I pick that color? Should I have used braid instead of mono? By asking yourself those types of questions, you’re learning from them.
I had a bad event on the St. John’s River not too long ago, and I started analyzing. As I did this, I figured out what I shouldn’t have done. One of them was putting all my eggs in one basket. I went into one area during practice and saw all these fish on beds and thought, “This is it. This is how I’ll win it.” So I put all my eggs in one basket and committed. On day one, I discovered about eighty percent of the field had found them too, and then a big front came through and pushed the fish off the beds. I learned from that. Always have a B plan, a C plan, and backups. I spent the rest of the year trying to find multiple patterns at every event.
By asking you about these things, you’ll learn a lot. Don’t be afraid to criticize yourself, but don’t be too hard. Don’t beat yourself up. Be objective, and you’ll learn from a bad event and become a better angler that much faster. I used to be angry with myself for days after I had a bad event, which slowed me down from learning from my mistakes. Now I shake it off and focus on learning from it. Focus on improving your performance, and you’ll find it easier to be critical of yourself.
It’s a fine line. I’ve tried over the years to remind myself to get back into reality and “ground” myself. Becky and my family help me out a lot with that. I also remind myself that I get to come out here and do something that I love to do every day. So remember to ground yourself and don’t get too upset with yourself.
