Entry 150-1

Kevin VanDam - The Classic Mentor

Figure Out What Happened

Editor’s Note: Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Michigan, won the 2005 Bassmasters Classic by only 6 ounces. To be the best bass fishermen we possibly can be, we need to be mentored by the best bass fishermen we can find. So this week, we’ve asked Kevin VanDam to give us some tips and tactics that will help each of us become a better bass fisherman. 

Question: Kevin, you won the 2005 Bassmasters Classic by only 6 ounces. For you, everything seemed to go wrong, except of course winning the Classic. What was the level of your mental toughness when you lost so many good fish? How can the average weekend fisherman obtain that same mental toughness to win a tournament at his bass club? How can an average fisherman learn to get that mental tourghness?

VanDam: I think the real key to remember is that at any level, when things start to go bad out on the water, you need to stop, remove yourself from the situation and take a look at everything that’s happened. Try and analyze why you’ve lost the fish. Did you try and horse the bass in, put too much pressure on it and pull the hooks out of its mouth? Did you over-react or under-react to the strike? Did you try and jerk the bass into the boat rather than lip it? Did you have your bait rigged wrong? Should you have cut your line and retied before you made the next cast?

See if you can come up with a definitive cause as to why you lost that fish. You may need to downsize if your bass has been short striking. You may not have had your plastic worm rigged to get a solid hook set. See if there’s anything you could have done to have hooked that fish, and then perhaps change the outcome for the next bass that bites your bait. Do you need to use heavier line? Will changing to a more-stiff rod help?

Many times, we get caught up in the heat of battle,  lose three or four fish consecutively and never stop to think why. Often we’re too slow to adjust our fishing to prevent the fish from getting off the hook. At that point, the longer time you take to adjust to setting the hook properly, playing the fish or getting it in the boat, the more fish you’ll lose. The initial step is to very-critically analyze what has caused you to lose that fish and then make adjustments so you won’t lose the next fish. If you’ll spend a moment or two thinking through what’s happened after you’ve lost your fish, most of the time, you’ll make an adjustment in either your tackle or your technique that will prevent you from losing the next bass.   

Question: Okay, Kevin, you lost a lot of fish in this tournament. When you went through the checklist of what was causing you to lose fish, what adjustments did you make, or what did you learn? What could you have done to keep from losing so many fish in the 2005 Bassmasters Classic?

VanDam: Each time I missed a bass, I would mentally analyze what caused me to lose that fish. I always try to be extremely honest with myself. When I watch television footage of other fishermen on a lot of these TV shows, often I’ll hear them say when they lose a fish, “Oh, I didn’t do anything wrong, the bass just got off.” But from watching them fish on television, I can tell they tried to horse the bass or attempted to turn the bass in a direction it didn’t want to go. There’s a lot of things you can do between the time the fish strikes and the time you put it in the boat.

Most of these ideas come from experience. However, you’ll learn more about what to do and what not to do if you really analyze and begin to look for the things you could’ve done to keep from losing the fish. One thing that will help you is to realize that we all make mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up when you find a mistake you should’ve seen before. Not being brutal with yourself, but rather honest, is a key ingredient to finding the mistakes you’ve made so you can adjust either your tackle or your technique. You don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Everything you do in fishing should lean toward preventing yourself from making the same mistake twice. You can’t prevent yourself from making any mistakes, but you can prevent yourself from continuing to make the same mistake over and over again.

When I analyzed why I was missing so many fish, I finally decided that the bass were striking at the baits, but not taking the baits deep in their mouths. They were trying to kill but not eat the baits. There was nothing I could do with my equipment or my technique to make the fish open their mouths wider or suck the baits in deeper. Therefore, I had to realize I would get a lot of strikes but miss a lot of bass to catch the fish I needed to win the tournament. I accepted that idea quickly, and that’s one of the reasons missing and losing fish didn’t completely destroy me in the tournament.

Next: The Day

Contents:

• Part 1: Figure Out What Happened
• Part 2: The Day
• Part 3: Staying Focused
• Part 4: Play to Your Strengths
• Part 5: Changing to the Winner