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andy Morgan and Bryan thrift for their consistency, and is trying to pattern his career after theirs. he’ s already demonstrated his ability to locate offshore fish with lowrance electronics and then catch them – preferably using a carolina rig baited with a Zoom ultra vibe speed craw in green pumpkin. his knack for figuring out bass has translated into $ 78,688 in 16 tour events, or average winnings of $ 4,918 per tournament – hardly the track record of the typical novice.
dealing With hits and misses except for a little bit of seed money he saved while working as a building materials salesman for a california company, and
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help from his family, patek is going it alone now. his only sponsor is phenix Rods, which helps him out with tackle. he competes out of a 2011 model Ranger Z521 and pays for his own travel expenses and tackle, looking ahead and waiting for his big break to come along, hopefully sooner rather than later. prior to this year, patek’ s best finish came in 2016 at pickwick lake, where he finished ninth. his season overall last year was a reasonably decent one as he collected checks in every event except hartwell and champlain, where he bombed. in fact, his 156thplace finish at champlain offers a good example of what befalls many rookies who are just starting out and have limited experience on various lakes. |
“ in practice i got on a terrific frog bite near fort ticonderoga, but then a front came through and it really screwed up the fishing,” notes patek.“ after day one i was near last place with three fish and 5 1 / 2 pounds. i got 15 pounds the second day, but the damage was already done.” although patek didn’ t have a plan B for a lake he’ d never fished before, he at least was adaptable enough to know that smallmouths were spawning elsewhere and scratched out a solid limit. he finished the year in 44th place overall, and the fact that the champlain fiasco probably cost him a berth in the forrest Wood cup still rankles. |
learning From adversity disappointment fuels his determination, but patek knows he’ s got to stop making the unforced errors that cost him precious points toward qualifying for this year’ s cup. for instance, in the lake travis tournament patek’ s shot at placing higher was ruined because he underestimated how long it would take to get back to the weigh-in site.
“ i came in four minutes late – completely unnecessary,” he says.“ i made a huge mistake
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and completely forgot about all the boat traffic that would slow me down. My thought process was that i had one little Guadalupe bass i needed to cull, so i gave myself only 35 minutes to get back from where i was in the pedernales River [ arm ]. But there were some big boats between there and takeoff, and i had to back way off.
“ When i saw that i only had a few minutes left and i still had a long way to go, i thought‘ uh-oh, i’ m not going to make it.’ My proudest moment in a tournament up to that point was leading after two days. Maybe i wouldn’ t have won it anyway, but to screw up like that – i guarantee it won’ t happen to me again because of a mental mistake.” perhaps not, but there are other pitfalls waiting, and patek will trip over his fair share of them as he matures. his short tournament record reflects that he has a knack for finding bass and then catching them, even on fisheries that are unfamiliar to him, which is to say just about everywhere. as was the case for many aspiring young pros before him, though, he’ s now discovering that the devil is in all the other details that separate middle-of-the-pack finishes from what might have been.
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