Entry 352-1
Inside the Head of Strike King’s Greg Hackney
Editor’s Note: Professional fishermen are different from most anglers. Everyone talks about how the pros set-up game plans for tournaments and how they know in practice what lures the fish will be biting, in what colors, at what time of the day. Even after the tournament, many pros will tell you the strategies they’ve used to win. But much of the reason some people win while others lose is an intuitive sense that’s very hard to describe. This week, we’ll get inside the head of Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, to learn how he decides which lures and techniques will catch bass on the day he’s fishing.
Part 1: Listen to the Music
Question: Greg, professional fishermen are much like other professional athletes. They use different techniques to get in the zone before they compete. Many-different professional fishermen have certain types of music or even specific songs that they believe inspire them to fish better and catch more bass. Is there any particular type of music you like or listen to when you’re fishing for big money?
Hackney: I’m a huge music fan. But the type of music that inspires me varies depending on the event. I may listen to rock music before one event, and at the next event, country music may motivate me. My choice in music before a competition depends on my emotions that day. Sometimes in the mornings on the way to the ramp, I never can find that right type of music that pumps me up and prepares me to compete. I don’t have one song that gets me ready to fish every time I go to the water. I get tired of listening to the same song.
I have XM radio, and I just scroll through it in the mornings until I’ve found the song I feel I need to listen to before the competition. I may be on my way to the ramp to start a tournament, which may take an hour of my time. I may listen to music from the 70s, the 80s or the 90s to today’s music. 
The way I feel that particular morning dictates the type of music I use to get ready to compete.
Question: By now, most of us have learned and understand intuitive fishing. Let’s break it down a little-more simpler. If you’re out on the water, and you’ve chosen to fish a Strike King spinner bait on a particular stretch of water and then suddenly, something says to use a crankbait instead, do you make that change immediately, do you think about it for a while before you make the change, or do you make the change at all?
Hackney: I don’t think about what I should do. When I hear the word crankbait in my head, I switch my lure immediately. I’ve fished long enough to know that you don’t win by second-guessing yourself. I’ll be honest. When that crankbait light goes off in my head, I may just decide to be hardheaded and fish that spinner bait 30-minutes longer than I should. But I’ll make that adjustment in lure selection.
Question: What do you do when you’re in a big-money tournament, and you’ve got 1 or 2 hours before time to check-in at the boat ramp? Most of us will panic and fish as many lures as fast as we can to try to hit that magic bait that will catch bass. 
What do you do and why?
Hackney: I’ll sit-down, put my rod down, take 5 to 10 minutes and say to myself, “Greg, now you’re driving home. The tournament’s ended. It’s time to critique yourself. If you had to change your day of fishing, what would you have done differently?” When I do that and take myself mentally out of the boat and into my vehicle driving back to my motel from a day of fishing, I can better analyze my day and probably see what I need to do to have fished better.
Many times speeding-up and changing lures isn’t the answer to start catching bass, when you haven’t been catching them. For me, it’s just the opposite. I sit down, mentally go to another place and time and evaluate my day of fishing as though it’s already ended and try to decide what I should have done that I haven’t done. Then I come out of that mental journey and have a better idea of the way I need to fish and the lures to use in those last few moments of competition. Normally I need a few minutes to clear my head and mentally get away from the tournament and the fishing, because I can get caught-up in the grind of fishing.
I came up with this technique when I thought about the number of times I’d been driving from the boat ramp back to the hotel and started critiquing myself saying, “Greg, all you needed to do was make that one little change, and you could have started catching the bass. But you didn’t make that change.” So, rather than waiting until I’m driving back to the motel and am unable to make that change, once I come up with that answer in the boat, I generally can change the way I’m fishing and perform much better. So, before I run out of time for fishing that day, I try to mentally get away from fishing, evaluate what’s happened so far and make the changes I need to make.
Contents:
- Part 1: Listen to the Music
- Part 2: Tough Fishing Decisions - How Greg Hackney Makes Them
- Part 3: Start with Your Strengths to Fish Your Best with Professional Angler Greg Hackney
- Part 4: Greg Hackney on His Strike King Hack Attack
- Part 5: Greg Hackney's Top Soft Plastics - The Rodent and the Rage Craw
