Story by Hunter Sales | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
As a college fishing coach, the area where I feel like I can make the biggest difference in an angler’s career is through the mental game. Understanding your personal goals and making sure your strategy for each tournament aligns with them is critical. During a championship event, the mindset must be different than the regular season. As a professional angler, points and checks are a reality throughout the regular season, but they all go out the window for a championship. In a championship, you aim for nothing less than a win.
So, what does that look like?
For me, the difference starts in preparation and extends through the tournament. For a championship, all my tournament research is centered around areas that can produce winning bags or historical winning patterns. During the regular season, I spend a lot of time figuring out which section of the lake has the biggest population of fish. In a 42-boat championship event however, it doesn’t take a huge population to support a winning event. There’s less traffic bouncing around on the lake, so I’m able to focus on some of the obvious high-percentage targets that can hold bigger than average fish. I won’t dive into too many details until after the tournament, but from my experience the biggest fish in a lake often live on isolated, prime pieces of cover. In the Smith Lake championship, those are the fish that I’ll be targeting.
Looking back to the 2024 Championship on Lake Hartwell, I had a substandard finish but feel like I approached the event the right way. When your goal is to win an event, you have to commit to an approach that you can beat people with. I have a ton of confidence with a fluke on Lake Hartwell, and I saw enough big fish that I rolled the dice and committed to it. I knew that shallow wolfpacks would likely become the dominant pattern in the event, but I hadn’t seen enough weight to win. Part of championship mentality is evaluating your practice and having the confidence to push the chips “all-in” to catch the biggest five bass possible. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to put together five big bites on a fluke each day, but I would make the same gamble if faced with it tomorrow.
Looking ahead to Smith Lake, I anticipate a winning weight near 50 pounds, according to local results. Knowing that it will take upwards of 16 pounds each day to win, practice will be spent searching for ways to consistently target three-pound and up class fish. For a lake filled with two-pound spotted bass, catching a kicker largemouth each day will be the difference maker for the anglers at the top of the leaderboard. I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve to target these largemouth.
I’m hoping that the next article from me will be recapping a championship victory!
Hunter Sales – Angler Profile
