Entry 90-3
Chad Brauer's Life As A Bass Fisherman
How Long Does It Take an Angler to Become a Success
Editor's Note: Although Chad Brauer is only 31 years old, he has been tournament fishing for eight years. Married with two children, Brauer will tell us this week about the life of a tournament fisherman as seen through the eyes of an up-and-coming star.
Question: Chad, how long do you think it takes for a tournament fisherman to find out whether he has the right stuff or not to fish as a pro?
Brauer: When I decided to make a career as a tournament fisherman, I said I would give myself three years. If within that three years, I hadn't been able to establish myself as a pro, pick up sponsors, and do well in tournaments, I would give up tournament fishing and look for another job. During my first year on the circuit, I won the third Pro-Am tournament I fished. Although I haven't gotten back in the winner's circle since that win, I have had plenty of opportunities to win and have placed well in tournaments.
Being a bass-fishing pro is much like being a pro in any other sports profession. You have winning streaks where you do really well, and then you have slumps when you wonder if you really understand the sport and how to play it. For the last two years, I've been in a slump, the worst slump I've been in since I've become a pro, which is very hard. As an athlete, you think that each year you will get better than you've been the year before. However, in any professional sport, that's not the way things always work out because there are variables that you can't control. Some of those variables include scheduling and the mood of the bass.
For instance, you can have two or three tournaments where the bass will only bite when you have to fish techniques that you don't fish very well. If that happens and you do poorly in two or three tournaments, regardless of how well you fish in the rest of the year, you're not going to have a good year. The next year, you may have three or four consecutive tournaments where the bass will only take baits using techniques that you fish the best. Then you'll do well in those tournaments. Tournament bass fishing is very much a life of peaks and valleys, so you can't allow yourself emotionally to get high when you're fishing well or to low when you're fishing poorly.
At the first of 2003, I decided to fish some of the BASS Open tournaments in the fall of 2003. I fished four of the Opens and made checks in three of them. I'm trying to build on my strengths as a fisherman and fish tournaments where my strengths and my best fishing tactics have the best chance of producing well for me. One of the most-critical ingredients for being a successful tournament fisherman is your confidence in your own ability to catch bass using the tactics in which you have the most confidence. I used this fall to fish tournaments that I thought I would do well in on lakes that I thought my fishing methods would work best on to build my confidence for the major tournaments that start in the spring and summer.
One of the mistakes I think I've made in the last two years is switching my style of fishing and my techniques of fishing to try and catch bass like the anglers are who are winning. That plan didn't work, so now I'm going back to fishing the tactics and lures that I used when I was more successful instead of trying to be like someone else. So far that strategy has improved my fishing and my ability to do well in tournaments. I've made the decision that as long as I can earn a living as a professional fisherman and as long as my wife can endure my being on the road as much as I have to be to be a professional fisherman, I'll continue to compete and stay in the game.
