Entry 150-5

Kevin VanDam - The Classic Mentor

Day 5: Changing to the Winner

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, before the Bassmasters Classic even started, ESPN had pretty much picked Aaron Martens to win. Martens had placed second in several Classics, and they kept calling him a West Coast fisherman, even though he had moved to Alabama a couple of years before. ESPN did features on his family and interviews with him. And then he lead the tournament for the first two days of the contest.

Martens was using the dropshot tactic, and ESPN even diagrammed on television what he was fishing and how he used the technique. Every day Martens’ tactic proved to be the best. Even though you were still in the top five, Martens was really winning. Why didn’t you change your way of fishing from the jerkbait and the buzzbait to dropshotting like Martens? Common sense dictates that if you fish like the winner in the same places the winner’s fishing, you’ve got a chance to beat him. All bets were on the dropshot tactic to win the Classic. Why didn’t you change?

VanDam: One thing you have to remember is that no pattern or technique matters until the last fish is caught on the last day. Plus, I don’t have confidence in the dropshot tactic, although I fish it when I have to, but it isn’t one of my strengths. Besides, I knew I should’ve already won the Classic on the last day with the opportunities I’d missed and the bites I’d already had.

The fish I lost would’ve put me in the lead had I not lost them. So my resolve got stronger, not weaker, on the last day of the tournament. I knew I was doing what I needed to do to win. On the last day, I’d eliminated all my lures except the jerkbait, and I decided that I would concentrate my fishing on what I did best, which was fish the jerkbait. Even though I wasn’t the leader going into the last day, I knew that if I wanted to have a chance to win, I’d have to fish the jerkbait.

Question: Wait a minute, Kevin, you knew the dropshotting technique was working and also that Aaron Martens was fishing the same water you were fishing. You knew he was consistently catching more bass than you were catching, and that he was weighing in heavier bass than you were weighing in? Where did you get the confidence to decide not to leave your jerkbait pattern?

VanDam: I knew that even though I wasn’t in the lead, the jerkbait pattern was a very-strong pattern, and I should have been leading the tournament by a big margin. I also knew that I was going to lose a lot of fish on the jerkbait, but if I could get at least seven bites, I should be able to land five of those fish. I also knew I’d been getting more than seven bites per day and still hadn’t brought in a limit of bass. I just felt that if I stayed with my pattern, sooner or later, things had to turn and go my way, and they did on the last day.

I think more fishermen would win more tournaments if they stayed with the patterns they’d learned to be the best for them than if they changed and tried to copy the leader by using a pattern with which they weren’t as familiar. I don’t ever worry about what the leaders are doing in a tournament. I have to fish what I’m confident with, and this is what you’ll see with most of the professional fishermen in big tournaments. Oftentimes, the top-five fishermen will all be using different tactics to find and catch bass, and all five will be successful.

The other thing that happened on the last day that made me believe I could win was that current didn’t run on the last day like it did on the first day, so I didn’t believe the bass were going to be as tight to the cover as Aaron and some of the other fishermen were fishing. I also didn’t think they were going to catch as many fish as I’d be able to catch fishing further away from the cover. So what really happened was that the conditions changed in my favor. Aaron Martens is a great fisherman, and he was on a winning pattern, however, the fishing conditions just changed in my favor.

You’ve got to remember, I only won but by 6 ounces. If Aaron would’ve caught one more fish, or if one of his fish would’ve weighed 6-more ounces than my fish, I wouldn’t have won. So in this Classic, it’s not like I blew anybody away. I just stayed in the pattern I believed in and caught bass the way I knew to catch them. That’s why a bass tournament isn’t really a tournament where we compete against each other. The tournament’s about who can figure out the fish the best and then match a technique and a lure to those conditions for the fish. All the leaders knew where the fish were. I just stayed with what I believed in, stayed with my pattern and what I’d learned over the years. And that’s what made me successful.

Question: Kevin, how important were your Strike King lures in this Classic?

VanDam: Without question, the most important component of any fisherman’s success is the tools in his tackle box. Even though I had to use another manufacturer’s jerkbait because the Strike King jerkbait that I designed ran too deep, I wouldn’t have been in the Classic had it not been for my Strike King lures, and I wouldn’t have been able to weigh in the fish that I weighed in without my 1/4-ounce buzzbait.

I fish for a living, day in and day out. I bet my living, my future and my professional career on Strike King lures. The reason I do this is because there’s a huge margin between Strike King lures and other lures on the market in comparison to the input for lure design, the component parts of the lures, the colors of the lures and every other aspect of the lures, which come from the pro fishermen who are fishing out on the circuit.

There’s no way Strike King can have every lure for every fishing condition that you may encounter, however, I’ve learned that most of the time the company does. This reason is why I fish Strike King lures and believe in these lures as much as I do. When Strike King finds a fishing condition we don’t have a lure to match, we come back and make one. And that’s exactly will happen with the jerkbait. This is the first time I’ve seen a necessity for having a more-shallow jerkbait than the Wild Shiner. So now that we know we need a bait for this situation, you can bet Strike King will have one. I’ll do all I can to make it the best shallow-running jerkbait on the market.

Each one of the Strike King pros is trying to identify tactics that will catch more fish, better and faster. Any time we can pinpoint a technique or a lure we don’t have, we’ll not only make a lure that’s as good, but better than the lure we’ve been missing. I’m even working on a new line of spinner baits although I think Strike King has the best spinner bait on the market already. I’m trying to make a better one that will serve a different purpose. Each of Strike King’s pros is looking at different lures and trying to improve them and make them better. That’s the reason I’m a Strike King pro, and the reason I fish Strike King lures.

Question: Kevin, what are you going to do with the $250,000 you won at the 2005 Bassmasters Classic?

VanDam: I’m looking for some land to purchase for me and my two boys, Jackson and Nicholas, where we can hunt and fish, just the three of us. This money will help take care of the down payment for that piece of property.

Kevin VanDam - The Classic Mentor

Day 5: Changing to the Winner

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