Entry 294-2
Tournament Bass Fishing with Greg Hackney – Get Your Head Together and Keep it Together
Editor’s Note: From February 20-22, 2009 in Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana, 51 of the best bass fishermen in the nation competed for $500,000 in the 2009 Bassmaster Classic, where the winner was determined by skill, luck, talent and emotional stability. If you lose your cool in a big tournament, you’ll lose the tournament, and if you’re not mentally prepared, you won’t fish well. How professional tournament bass fishermen deal with the emotions and the pressures of bass fishing determines their success or failure. This week, Strike King has asked Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, the pre-Classic favorite, how he deals with his emotions during a big tournament. If we can understand how the best bass fishermen in the world deal with the emotions of bass fishing, we’ll greatly improve our chances for success every time we fish for bass.
Part 2: How to Handle the Slump
Question: Greg, our jobs, our personal lives and our fishing experiences all experience slumps, times when we don’t feel we can do anything right. How do you handle a slump, and how do you get out of it?
Hackney: I’ve never had a slump. I don’t believe in slumps for fishermen, especially tournament fishermen. There are good and bad days of bass fishing and tournament fishing. The quickest way to enter a slump is to think you’re in one. The more you dwell on the slump you’re in, the longer you’ll stay in that slump. To catch bass and win tournaments, you must become mentally stronger than the idea of a slump that controls your fishing. People talk themselves into not performing well by convincing themselves that an outside force (a slump) is causing their misfortune.
Question: How do you become mentally strong enough not to be affected by a slump?
Hackney: You must have a lot of confidence in yourself and know you have the ability to find and catch bass. If you’re not catching bass, you must frequently convince yourself that you know how to find bass and catch them. I feel blessed that I’ve never been in a slump. 
If you think you’re in a fishing slump, you must look at your problem the same way a defensive back on a football team who has two long passes caught by the wide receiver he’s defending examines his situation. To continue to play the game and stop that wide receiver from catching the next pass, that defensive back must say to himself, “Okay, that guy burned me for two long passes, but he won’t burn me for a third one.” To get out of a slump or prevent a slump from happening, see the positive in a negative situation.
A bass fisherman has to go out every day believing he’ll catch a number of big bass. If you can’t make yourself believe and adopt this type of philosophy, you won’t catch nearly as many bass as you possibly can. If I’m not getting bites or catching many bass, I’ll start mentally encouraging myself by saying, “There’s an 8 pounder waiting for this next cast.”
Next: When the Wheels Come Off
Contents:
- Part 1: Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster of Bass Fishing
- Part 2: How to Handle the Slump
- Part 3: When the Wheels Come Off
- Part 4: Disqualification or A Dead Fish - Now That's Bad
- Part 5: I Love a Streak
