Boredom...

Things have slowed down a bit. My boat is currently "under construction" and I live too far away from the people I fish with to just pick up and drive 70 miles to fish for fun. Lowrance hooked a brother up with a replacement graph for the one that quit on me at Douglas and Loomis sent me a new shakeyhead rod. Other then that, just been relaxing, waiting for the next round of tournaments to start up. Fletcher got his new Ranger the other day, from what Im hearing, its a pretty sweet ride. He signed up to fish all 3 of the northern opens so Ill be watching for him to do well. I joked with him today that if he double qualifies for the classic I want his second slot. I feel like my hands are tied a bit right now, my goal now is to try to find some sort of financial backing so that I can fish all three circuits next season. Im not sure if thats going to be possible but thats the goal. Its really frustrating, knowing your on the cusp but just a little bit away.

There was an article on http://www.bassmaster.com/ that listed a ton of ridiculous stats throughout the Elite series season. When I compared myself (in the opens) to the Elites I realized that I still had alot of work to do. Stats like, average fish weighed in per day and average weight per fish. I did stack up reasonably but not high enough to be proud of, most of the stats had me in the bottom 1/4 of the field. I, however, know Im getting better. I feel like I have gained tons of experience, I feel like I made myself remarkably better at shakeyhead fishing (norman and douglas), topwater fishing (douglas), matt fishing (toho), deep cranking (douglas), deep jig fishing (douglas) and a few other techniques that I really only used in practice. Bottom line, I feel like the long lay off between big time tournaments is going to hurt. The only way your going to get better is to compete against the best, on the best fisheries. Im going to have a hard time improving if I keep fishing the same lakes and the same techniques. The problem with fishing local tournaments on these small lakes in Ohio is that you already know what works at what time, its tough to try different stuff. I reckon I need to dedicate myself to improving as an angler rather then worrying about winning in the local tournaments.Thats not really fair to my partner so Im not sure how I should do this. 

At Griggs, I throw a freakin jig or a senko all day long. At Indian lake, I throw a frog for awhile in the morning, I can punch light matts for a couple of hours and if I need to get a limit quick I can crank an area that holds a ton of 12" fish. At alum, I catch smallies. At Deercreek I flip laydowns and crank riprap. All of those things can get me a check, can get me a win almost any day on those lakes. Its like a dead end street, even if I did poorly in one of those tournaments, it wouldnt deter me from doing the exact same thing on the next tournament. Am I in a rut? I refuse to fall into a rut. Im going to fish out this season because I have committed to fish a bunch of tournaments but next year, my only goal is to qualify for the Elite series or be fishing in a way that will help me achieve my goals. Im done fishing in a rut.

Sorry for the un-educating rant but this is sort of what runs through my mind all day long in some form or another. All day long, Im not even kidding, Im thinking about how I can get better, how hard its going to be to shave those few extra strokes off my game. Thinking about where I need to go to polish deep cranking skills, thinking about where I need to be to get better at carolina rigging and despite what some people think, you have to catch tons of fish to get better at a technique. You dont learn anything if you arent catching fish and its hard to catch bass in Ohio, harder anyway. Some people think that since its harder to catch bass in ohio, then that makes it easier when you go to places where there are lots of bass. Its totally untrue, you have to get experience catching bass, loads of them, Ohio may be one of the tougher places in the U.S. to do that.

Fishing is more like golf then fisherman or golfers would admit. I hate golf but if you want to get good at golf, you better hit alot of golf balls.