Entry 100-3

George Cochran - My Five Most Miserable Tournaments

The Tattle-Tale Tournament

Editor's Note: Most of us believe that professional fishermen live the stuff of dreams. They fish for a living, teach seminars, work with sponsors and have a great time. But the side of professional bass fishing that we rarely ever see is the bad tournaments-miserable tournaments-the tournaments they want to forget. Just like you, professional fishermen have bad days also. This week, George Cochran, a 2004 inductee into the Professional Bass Fishing Hall of Fame will share some of his memories of his worst tournaments.

Cochran: We had the first Mega-Bucks tournament in Florida, and I had found a really good spot on the first day of the tournament where I was catching loads of really-nice bass. I was in first place at the end of the first day with 24 pounds of bass and knew I had a chance to win this one. I was so excited because I had not seen another boat in this bay where I was fishing. I knew that none of the other competitors understood where or how I had caught my fish.

However, on the second day of the tournament, as soon as I got to the little bay I was fishing, 22 boats already were there fishing the water where I had caught my bass. I was so mad and so frustrated that I left the area. I couldn't figure out what had happened, because I knew that no one saw where I was fishing or how I was catching the bass. I didn't know it at the time, but my partner from the first day had told everyone within earshot where we had fished the day before.

There were so many people fishing my water that I wasn't able to fish where I had fished the first day. I ended up in 26th place after that tournament. All the other people fishing in my spot caught fish the second and third day of the tournament. They didn't catch many, but if each boat caught two or three bass, if I'd been the only boat in there, I possibly could have caught them all. This was a miserable tournament for me because I really had a chance to do well if my partner hadn't told everyone where we had fished, the lures we used, and how we caught our bass. But that's tournament fishing. You can control everything in a tournament except your partner, mechanical breakdowns and the weather.




 

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