Entry 333-1
How to Win a Bass Tournament with Denny Brauer
Editor’s Note: The first week of November, 2009, Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Michigan, told us the five things he believed were important to winning bass tournaments. VanDam mentioned that one of the people who taught him the mindset required to win a bass tournament was Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Missouri. So, this week, we asked Brauer to tell us his five most-important keys to winning bass tournaments.
Part 1: You Have to Know You Can Win
Question: Denny, in your opinion, what five factors are required to win a bass tournament?
Brauer: The most-important ingredient is having confidence in yourself and your fishing ability to know you can win a tournament. This one factor separates great fishermen from also-rans. At any tournament, you’ll have three-different types of fishermen - some who think they can win, others who hope they eventually will win and the few competitors who know they can win, and they’re the bass fishermen who win multiple tournaments. I don’t really know where all that confidence comes from, but success often breeds success. When you win a tournament, you seem to climb another rung in the ladder of bass-fishing confidence.
Question: Denny, if you were a baseball player, every time you stepped-up to the plate, the fans would know that you’d swing for the fence - no singles, no doubles and no bunts. 
You’d try to hit it out of the park every time you came to bat. Where does that confidence come from in a bass tournament?
Brauer: Really that confidence in fishing a tournament is common sense. If you want to make money from endorsements, sponsors, speaking engagements and public appearances, you have to win and have that mentality to win. Early in my bass fishing career, I was just attempting to survive. When I first got into bass fishing, making sure I got a paycheck was far-more important than winning or losing. But if you look at the big picture, you don’t have many opportunities to win in bass fishing. In NASCAR, a driver has 45 races a year where he can win. But on the BASS circuit, we only have eight tournaments, and there are from 150 to 200 competitors in the race trying to win. 
So, I always figure, why squander one of those opportunities fishing conservatively?
You’re right, I swing for the fence every time I enter a BASS tournament, and I strike out a lot. But I also win. If I were to give someone advice on how to win a bass tournament, it would be to learn to find that confidence. Then when you went to a tournament, you wouldn’t just hope to win or think you might could win, you’d know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’d be willing to do whatever it took to win.
