PRO FISHING HINDSIGHT
KELLY JORDON
BASS PRO TOUR
TURNED PRO: 1996
WHAT HE WISHES HE’D KNOWN: DON’T LET DOCK
TALK GET YOU OFF YOUR GAME
JASON CHRISTIE
BASS PRO TOUR
TURNED PRO: 2008
WHAT HE WISHES HE’D KNOWN: IT AIN’T OVER
UNTIL IT’S OVER
BPT angler Jason Christie says it’s important to treat
every day as a new one, and to not get discouraged when a
productive pattern appears to fizzle out. Staying open-minded
is one of the most common attributes among top-level
performers.
“A tournament day is an eight-hour day, and the last hour
is just as important as the first,” he says. “Back when I first
started, if I wasn’t catching them in the first two or three
hours, it was easy for me to get discouraged. I didn’t give up,
but it was sort of like I just started going through the motions
instead of trying something different. I’ve learned that sometimes
it might just take an area change or a bait change to
turn things around.”
Christie recalls the 2011 FLW Tour event on Lake Hartwell
as a good example. After using a spinnerbait to build a solid
lead going into the final day, his bite seemed to go away
when he needed it most.
“I knew my fish were being depleted,” says Christie. “By 11
a.m., I hadn’t had a single bite.”
Rather than abandoning the area or the pattern, Christie
made a blade swap that turned the day around.
“I switched from a No. 5 Colorado to a No. 4 1/2 to make a
more subtle thump,” he says. “I ended up catching enough in
the last two hours to win.”
PHOTO BY MAJOR LEAGUE FISHING
BPT pro Kelly Jordon has learned plenty of lessons over his
25-year career. One of the most valuable is to always trust your
instincts and abilities over the chatter you might hear on the bank.
“It’s kind of cliché, but it’s true,” Jordon says. “I’ve seen it be
detrimental to guys who may have otherwise had a chance. I’ve
never been one to get caught up in dock talk, but I have had
some instances where I listened to other anglers and it wound
up taking me on wild goose chases that cost me dearly.”
One of the costliest of those instances occurred during the
opening round of a 2008 tournament on Florida’s Harris Chain.
Jordon, who had an early boat draw, had located an area in
practice he felt really good about. However, rather than going
straight to his juice, he decided to act on a last-minute tip
offered up by another competitor who drew out near the bottom
of the last flight.
The other angler claimed he had located a pair of whoppers
on beds at the rear of a canal. Realizing his chances of getting to
the fish before someone else were slim, that pro offered the spot
to Jordon since the latter had an early boat draw. The problem
was that the sweet spot was close to 50 miles from where
Jordon had originally planned to start.
Jordon elected to gamble on the offer, and it cost him. The
beds were vacant when he arrived, and he left the canal with an
empty livewell. To make matters worse, Jordan found a flotilla of
boats in his primary area by the time he made the run back.
“Everybody in the top 15 after the first day was in there,”
Jordon recalls. “They hammered them. It felt like somebody had
kicked me in the gut. I was sick about it. I ended up finishing
108th out of 109 in that tournament.”
For Jordan, the memory brings to mind another lesson
learned many times over by a passel of pros since the advent of
tournament fishing: “You can’t win a tournament on the first day,
but you can certainly lose one.”
PHOTO BY MAJOR LEAGUE FISHING
58
FLWFISHING.COM | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING.COM | JUNE-JULY 2020