By Matt Stark
If you are a tournament angler, you probably consider bass tournaments a “fight”, of sorts. If so, then running may be a better strategy than standing your ground. I know a few of you are scratching your heads at the thought of what I am about to suggest. After all, nobody goes into a fight with the expectations of winning when their strategy is to run.
We have all heard of the flight-or-fight syndrome. It’s ingrained in all animals primal instincts including humans. The flight-or-fight syndrome is applied to many aspects of human existence, and it definitely applies to fishing as well. We all know the type of fishermen that can sit on a weedbed or point for eight hours without a sniff, casting the same lure in their tackle box before admitting defeat. Those types of fishermen are fighters. They are stubborn and committed to making the fish bite when and where THEY want to fish. These anglers take the “stand your ground” philosophy to a new level.
On the flip side, there are some anglers that can’t sit still. They cycle through different lures throughout the day, and they will burn $100 in gas just to get five bites before they need to return to the ramp for their tournament weigh-in. These fishermen are the runners. They “take flight” if things aren’t perfect, but taking flight and running to a different spot may be the best strategy for consistently catching fish. A great example of this tournament strategy working can be seen in the career of FLW Tour Pro Bryan Thrift. Thrift, who hails from Shelby, NC is known for hitting upwards of 100 spots in a given day. He currently holds the record for the most consecutive 5-fish limits in FLW history, and his winnings have exceeded 2 million dollars to date.
Rapid flight doesn’t necessarily mean you are running scared. Seasoned competitive anglers like Thrift don’t run due to fear, however, the root of their methodology is based on the aforementioned fight-or-flight syndrome. To understand this, we need to remember that a tournament is only 8 hours long. During the course of the day, bass fishermen try the best they can to catch the heaviest five fish they can. There are certainly times when sitting on one spot can deliver a good payout, but doing so could also produce nothing. This is why many seasoned tournament anglers take “flight” from unproductive water to sample as many other areas as they can- as quickly as they can- to establish a pattern or depth the fish are active in. They then target those specific areas throughout the lake in order to get as many bites from quality fish as they can. No other lake is synonymous for this run-and-gun technique than Lake Norman. It is no coincidence that Bryan Thrift has won two major fishing tournaments on Lake Norman and countless other smaller events on that body of water.
So why is “taking flight” or “running” a winning pattern? It is important to remember that bass are predatory fish. They want to eat, but sometimes the weather or lake conditions don’t encourage active feeding behavior on all parts of the lake. Notice I said, “all parts of the lake”. On any given day, there are groups of bass feeding somewhere. It just might not be in the area you are fishing. The best anglers in the world know how to find those active fish. They do this by quickly identifying unproductive water and sampling different areas throughout the lake. This gives the angler a much better chance of stumbling upon those active fish. It’s a battle of attrition. Each “spot” provides another opportunity to catch bass, and typically the bigger bass are the first to feed. It’s almost as if there is a hierarchy in bass communities the same way there is in other parts of the animal kingdom. This also plays into the success of this “flight” strategy. So, the next time you are out on the water and are itching for a fight, try running. You may find it’s the winning strategy.
Matt Stark ~ 848-248-7468 ~ MATT@RIOTBAITS.COM