The Year of Composure

I haven’t written anything for a long time for a lot of reasons. Maybe I just needed some time to think about who I was, and perhaps more importantly, who I wanted to be. But I guess what strikes me the most, was the fact that as I am about to turn 50, I spent the past year considering that so much of my life has been lived, and I don’t know what to think about what I have to show for it. Time on the water gives you a lot of time to think. I kept on focusing on the usual, I made a lot of money…sure, I saw a lot of places, and I remembered memories so old now that I wonder if they are real, or self-edited versions of times and places that I can envision… but I can’t feel them anymore. It’s as if the music of concerts long past have dulled into the concept that I was there that night, but I can no longer hear the notes. 

I have a habit of naming years, and I have always thought it was cool to give a year a name and set the theme perhaps to continually enable further development in an area that I believed was essential. I called 2021 the ‘Year of Composure.’ You see, early in my career, maybe when I was 25 or so, I took a lot of pretty bad hits as I was coming up in Technology. Simple things, not being adequately prepared, meetings that went off the rails, choosing the wrong words in essential meetings. We have all been there. But after that I developed quickly and rose to heights that I never expected possible, and I grew comfortable in my environment, and I guess things that I emphasized in my skillset became so valuable in the ecommerce world that we live in that I got used to being something of a tiger in a land of gazelles. 

2021 refreshed my memory on what life is like as a gazelle. I can safely say that 2021 offered a beating so severe that the only positive thing I can say regarding this year was that I maintained my composure. Except on Chicamagua of course, where I lost it a bit. Don’t get me wrong, there was magic to be had, and for moments I felt like I was back, but then it drifted away again and composure was my focus. Life is tougher than people tend to remember when you are young, but fishing beats the daylights out of a man when you are older, literally and figuratively. 

And I understand why. You see, for all the posturing, the telling yourself that you are developing, the wonderful sentiments of so many of my peers, and thank you, all of you, for offering me those words of encouragement, you could not imagine how special those moments were, for all of those things you say to counteract adversity, older people don’t experience failure the way younger people do. There is a feeling when you are older that pervades your thinking, it is the thought that time is running out, time to make things right, to experience the things you might have missed, to be the man that you dreamt of being when so much was ahead of you and so little behind. Its not the same old as elderly, because you can still change your stars, but you have to change them now, right now, because what is before you has now become obviously less than what is behind. I wrote the existential fishing crisis article because I was beginning to feel this very keenly, and I believe I stopped writing because it was overwhelming. 

And then the 2021 season happened. 

I was crushed in 2021. Just flat on my back, completely crushed. The season started badly, steadily maintained a foot on my neck, and ended badly. And I took it with a smile, because of the very real reality that if you want to be a professional, you have to act like one. And that is the only professional thing in fishing I did last year, I acted like one. Nothing more. A lot of people have commented or asked me why I didn’t write, or even post often. 

It’s simple, I lost confidence that I had any credibility. So perhaps if I finally explain a little bit of what happened, how it happened, perhaps I will be able to let it go and move to a better mindset and it is my hope that if some of you are there, maybe this article might be a welcome light in what was for me a very dark night on open water with no land to be found. 

I began 2021 with a clear idea that winning is really, really difficult. You see, when you actually win something, any tournament, you might think that you cover the details of what went on, how you approached it, how you succeeded, all of that. And I published that article, you might have read it. But there was something else behind all of that, sort of a truth that when it hits you, is a real dilemma that you have to face if you hope to rise to the next level. 

For me it was the reality that my colleagues in this mad venture we are all investing our lives in, are really good fisherman. We have all invested in boats, and equipment, read the books, spent time on the water, struggled with our existentialism as it relates to fishing performance (maybe you read that article too). We have all somehow convinced wives and girlfriends that our absence is justified, that our investment is justified, that how much we care about this…is justified. A younger man, just like I did 25 years ago simple says, I am a tiger, and goes out hunting gazelle’s. I had the exact opposite take. I realized winning was prolific given who I was fishing with, and instead of seeing myself as better, I saw how good my fellow fisherman really are. 

Winning is not so easy. You take the sum total of all the fishing concepts, memorize them, live with them, get deep on them, and that wont take you to the podium. Not even close… you need more. 

And I became obsessed with that more. 

I opened the season looking for something in my fishing that I could not describe. I saw not that I was getting better, but rather that I was missing something so essential I was shocked I had not realized it. Added to that, I did not even know what it was that I was missing, just that I was missing it. 

Try starting a season like that. 

Oh, I had a name for it sure, I called it the anti-pattern and it was wrapped in this idea, that somewhere out there every moment of every day there was a buffet of raging bass prepared to destroy any bait they could find. When the bite was off, it wasn’t really off, it was just off in most places, but in that place the bass were just aching for a strike. When the fishing was tough, it was nothing but five pounders there. Sort of like an invisible rainbow was on the lake leading to a pot of bass gold. All you had to do was look past the electronics, and logic of maps, the community holes and where they should be, you had to forget the notes and lyrics, and focus on the music. 

In a word, you had to have faith it even existed, which for me is hard to come by. But if you could do that, if you could see the water with soft eyes, and optimism, perhaps something akin to magic, it would be there. 

I am here to tell you, I still believe it, wholeheartedly. 200 days of beatings, the embarrassment, the disappointment, rolling up on stage with admittedly pathetic bags, and I still believe it. 

I will never not believe it. 

But I did not find it. Just moments here and there. It was as if the rainbow shone for a minute, and was gone, I knew I had found it for a cast or two, and then lost my way again. And what’s crazy is that I never stopped looking for it. The whole time I could have done this or that, caught a bag, been respectable, told everyone including myself I did my best, take my mediocre but ‘I don’t suck’ finish and try to sleep at night. 

I just can’t do that. It’s always been to the top or bust, in every aspect of my life. But damn…I think I could have picked an easier goal, like a well-tailored lawn, or a tough ping pong serve. No, I had to become a professional fisherman and compound the issue by thinking like some sort of half-baked bass shaman. 

And I fished for the biggest fish in the lake no matter where I went. No spotted bass for me. No 2 pounders to round out the bag, no way. I actually avoided baits, techniques and locations that would produce anything of the sort. The classic aspect of this was that my boat was so destroyed by the time I got to the end of the season that I am lucky I wasn’t fishing right outside of the flag boat. 

I learned so much. On a very, non-metaphysical level, I really did improve and its important because I learned some things that are essential to fishing a national trail.  I will give you two examples that I think are worth gold so anyone interested stay tuned on these. 

First, I learned the reality of pressure in big tournaments packed with advanced anglers. At James river I found this little grass bed with deep channels on both sides in a faraway creek, not the Chickahominy, that when the wind blew from the west, was so hard to get into I literally nearly took the engine off my boat, but after fighting the current, depth, and general misery getting there, offered up quality fish, on either side depending on which way the tide was running. Both spots on either side were no more than the size of car, and not even an suv, like a compact car. And these fish only hit a particular lure, in a particular color, with a really particular retrieve, but they hit it like clockwork. 

But as the tournament neared, the pressure changed everything. Late practice saw that the fish were smaller, and far more difficult to catch. That rainbow faded, and just moved, and I failed to figure out where it went. I went into the tournament with nothing to show for practice, junk fished and ground it out, so much possibility and so little delivery. I was mortified because I learned that where you are setting your sights, no matter how great it is, has to last, and that lesson was worth the season alone.

The second thing I learned was how critical it is to be able to pivot. Sometimes the most subtle detail is all it takes to find the rainbow and make it brilliant. At Dale Hollow, I had literally the best fishing week of my life in practice. I have never caught more fish, of ridiculous quality, anywhere I have ever been. Five days straight I laid into these fish with absolute surety that the pattern was exact, and could be reproduced anywhere the rosetta stone of factors were present. In fact, once I had it, I just spent a day motoring all over the lake looking for just the right stuff, making a handful of casts and having great fish to show for it. I was certain I was going to win. Seriously, I felt like I had it locked. 

And no one had it. I fished relatively alone all week on a lake full of boats and it was without a doubt one of the great experiences of my life. But then it rained…hard, and the water went up 10 feet. 

Now for those of you who don’t fish in the absolutely awesome state of Tennessee, this requires some explanation. When the water goes up a bit, things can change, we have all seen the video, but when the water goes up 10 feet, you are no longer fishing on the same lake. Oh sure, the gps will still take you there in the truck, but once you are there, its not the same lake you were fishing in practice. 

So here is where I utterly failed to pivot. A lot of my pattern was based on very particular depth and structure. It was so exact I actually spent time getting my baits to run exactly correct in the water column. On the first day of the tournament I caught some fish using my same process, but nothing like it was before. I managed to weigh a terrible two day total and got sent home wondering what actually happened. 

It was at this time I received a phone call which really wound me around the axle. It was from a friend of mine who happens to be a phenomenal fisherman but was having a tough practice when I told him about my pattern. A lot of people wouldn’t have done that, but I am not one of them. It just felt cold not to tell him what I found.

Anyway, he explained to me that he was fishing the same pattern as in practice but the depth he chose was the same column the fish were in before, which was now much deeper. 

In other words, the fish I was catching never moved at all. They stayed right were they were with 10 more feet of water piled on top of them. Now if you are from Tennessee and this was obvious to you, I congratulate you and I have no hard feelings. But when I realized what he was saying, I quite literally imploded…with composure. I failed to pivot after a dramatic change in the environment. To be fair, I chalked this one up to a lack of experience but it still hurt a lot.

The whole year went just like that, pretty much every tournament had some kind of story that presented to me a concept that is golden. 

And this is what I took away from the whole experience during the year of composure. The rainbow is real, and it might even be magical, but finding it is not magic, rather, it is the ability to process information on multiple levels, and in multiple dimensions.  I got the first part all year, it was the second part that eluded me, all year. 

I have provided two simple explanations, pressure and pivoting. These both involve processing on multiple levels. Pressure for example affects population of fish, their general attitude, frequency of bait interest, etc. These levels interact with one another in various ways and when they are locked in, create a unique dimension that we base a pattern upon. When one considers fishing from a hierarchical perspective, you can ascertain order of importance and prioritize for best results. There is no linear solution because there is no single best. But to be clear, if you look at levels, which in fishing terms are often, and most simply, attributes of the environment in question, you get water temperature, clarity, location, depth, structure, light, time of day, the list is endless. Taken together and placed in some sort of hierarchy or ‘meaning graph’ if you will, you get a single dimension. That single dimension has meaning, which allows you to define a strategy and execute tactics.

The problem is that by defining a dimension using levels, you actually invalidate multiple dimensions in most people’s minds, which is why thinking in multiple dimensions is so difficult. The best example here is color/vibration vs. sound/vibration in muddy water. If you define a hierarchy where sound or color are predominant, you get completely different solutions on how to proceed. One is a hard knocking crankbait, for example, the other might be a flashing chartreuse spinnerbait. And this is the simplest example, add in the bass sight sphere at depth, current, structure, combinations of sound and color, vibration, etc. etc. What defines differences and preferences in this model causes a derivation in terms of the dimension. In simple terms we just tie on a crankbait and spinnerbait and go fishing, but the problem here is that there a lot of viable dimensions when you take into account space. The size of big tournament water opens up innumerable dimensions.

So, adding multiple dimensional thinking to your fishing sounds trivial, but in reality might be the most difficult thing an angler can do. How I miss the days when being a pattern fisherman vs. a spot fisherman seemed like the golden ticket to the Wonka factory.

 And to boot, I will give you a dimension that I personally believe is critical. And it has nothing to do with any attribute on the water per se, but exists commonly everywhere.  

This is the dimension marked by an attribute that could be titled as ‘uncertainty’. For example, take a dimension that points to 5 spots holding fish, all of which equally conform specifically to the dimension in question, only 2 produce fish, and it isn’t even the same two each time. This actually adds a level of uncertainty ‘after the fact’, and is very much the core of power fishing by the way.

But power fishing is specific in advising that you are always on the move until you find active fish, and theres a critical reason behind that. 

When you hear about fisherman pounding a place refusing to move because they believe in the pattern, this is likely a power fish being incorrectly executed. The mistake, and my mistake over and over, is that they believe in the pattern, but they aren’t catching fish so there are two reactions to the situation. One, they change patterns. Two, they hold in place resolute. Both are wrong. 

If uncertainty is present, then the dimension itself is by definition, ‘uncertain’. Therefore, it can be on or off indiscriminately. Thus, you simply move and move in the same pattern until you find an example of certainty in that dimension. 

This is correctly executed power fishing. To fail this move, you are actually finesse fishing with power tactics and power lures in many cases. 

Incidentally, a dimension that is both on and off due to uncertainty is actually two dimensions, but that’s kind of a joke for all of you physicist fisherman out there. For the rest of us it is called bass fishing. 

The things I learned this year were so valuable and have changed me as a fisherman, changed how I see strategy and execution, how I plan, practice, when I choose to move, they define the reasons I choose to stay and how I shift tactics. 

I wasn’t ready for the national competition in 2021. 

But maybe that’s the reality of expanding your focus and trying for the next level. In any case, there is no question that I was challenged all year by a failure to perform, and composure was my only option. I had the choice to fall apart and fold, or deal with my disappointment as a professional. I made the right choice, I am actually pretty proud of myself, except for Chicamagua, had a bad moment there. As a result of this dedication to composure, I developed so much more than I would have. And I have a great example. 

Day two on Champlain, I did not have a fish until 11 am. And I fished hard. I was on the largemouth bite the whole time because I was addressing the pressure issue discussed above. I gambled that the largemouth bite would hold out through practice and the tournament and because of the pressure, the smallmouth bite might falter, and for many it actually did. Anyway, things were not going well in the morning and I remember reaching a point of real frustration bordering on more. It was at that moment where composure, my practice of composure shined. I remember thinking things like I was going to fish perfectly. Every case would be precise, every retrieve perfect fo the lure I was throwing. And if I failed, I would fail looking like the greatest technique fisherman on the water. And I moved a lot. I was power fishing and my trolling motor was practically smoking by 1. But I had 16 pounds including a 4,15 smallmouth. Overall, I finished in the middle, but it was critical to my succeeding at something in 2021. I faced that adversity, held my composure, and turned it. 

If you cannot hold yourself together and focus, even when it’s tough, you can’t fish professionally. Which brings me to the final note of 2021, because for me the 2022 season actually begins in earnest on Monday, when I leave to go down south. 

Someone I really care about, and whose opinion I hold in high regard, really hurt me this week. I have not been able to eat, or sleep, or function normally. In that moment, you know the one where you realize that you have been devastated by someone you know and trust, I hit the bottom in this year of composure, and I remember thinking the irony that it wasn’t even fishing that struck the final blow. 

And given my season that’s really saying something. 

You see, I think when you take such a prolific beating on the water, it weakens you off the water because we all have sensitivities we carry in life. And God willing, when you are taking a beating hopefully those sensitivities are lying dormant so you can get to them in a constructive fashion. But this thing pulled in other things about my value as a person, the things I am afraid of, and that sense of moving into the latter part of life… right into the forefront. It meshed with the disappointment caused by failure and my lingering lack of confidence from such a tough year and the result was dramatic. Just writing this is really uncomfortable, but it is so relevant… and if I really want to be authentic, enough to put it on my truck, how can I not write it.  This was just one person hurting another person’s feelings, that’s all, it happens every day. But sometimes when we are at the bottom, small blows in long dormant sensitive areas, added to a serious blow in the present can be very severe. 

I still can’t sleep, its 4:30 am. 

But before this happened I had already named 2022, for reasons that are ironically wholly unrelated, but I now see wholly apply.

Fishing is beating me up pretty badly because I love it, I care about it, and I have never in my life wanted anything more than I want this. And after the hit I took this week, I got that terrible feeling like I was invalidated as a person…we have all had that moment, and it is not pleasant. In all of this, I am so thankful that my wife, who is the kindest person I have ever known, sustained me until I found my balance. 

At present, I am trying to put myself back together, and it begins with composure, that great lesson of 2021. I still can’t see the way forward, I admit I am deeply shaken. But I know the way. And even though I can’t yet see it, I know it’s all about the theme of 2022. 

The year of courage.