"Fishing for One Bite"

As a tournament angler, how do you react when all your plans and practice don't pan out how you envisioned. How do you keep the "PMA" (positive mental attitude) when bad things happen. Well I got a first hand lesson in why it is important to keep your emotions in check when the day goes bad, fast. It was the second to last tournament of my club season. I was in contention to take angler of the year in only my second full season with the club. I was sitting in second place and had to really catch em to gain the points needed to over take the leader. So I practiced really hard as I usually do. I tried to establish multiple patterns but had a real hard practice. I did find a great shad spawn bite in the morning and knew that if I could gets some bites early that they would be good fish. After that I would just fish my instincts and normal spring time patterns. Morning of the tournament came and I wake up to the sun and birds chirping. I had slept in and woke up hours after the tournament had already started. What a blow! I was up and on the road in minutes with the disappointment overcoming me. I arrived to the lake and ran full speed to the area I had found the shad spawn bite. As I expected there were no shad to be found. I made some casts around the area with no luck. This is the moment I believe was the turning point for my whole season. At that moment I had to stop for a second, breathe, and realize that I just needed five bites but I needed to focus on just getting one bite first. I am most confident fishing deep offshore structure, so I headed to an area that I have caught fish out deep earlier in the spring. Even though I knew that many bass were moving up to spawn, but were getting fished for everyday. I decided that I would stick with my confidence fishing style and baits. I would fish for the bass that were possibly post or pre spawn. A long story made shorter, I had a limit fishing my confidence baits out deep in just two hours. I had the opportunity to cull a few times and ended up getting 2nd place that day. This day taught me so many lessons and I really ended up turning a disaster of a morning into a successful day. I could have easily been discouraged and thrown in the towel. I could have easily followed the crowd and fished tediously for the spawners that were getting harassed daily up shallow. Instead I decided to get ONE bite. After that I would work on two and so on. Not only did I learn many valuable lessons about myself and bass tendencies that day but I ended the year with the AOY title. I really attribute the season title to the decision to look for one bite at a time and stick with techniques that made me feel like every cast could be a fish. I wanted to share this because I have so often fished with people who get rattled by adverse situations, that direct them in a downward spiral for the rest of their day. A lost fish, boat problems, or even sleeping in might happen but if you just focus hard on that next bite I believe that your next fishing day or tournament will be more successful and fun! ~Bryden Mugleston "Practice Makes Progress"