Mark Rose
“Going into day two, I said to myself,
‘This tournament is pretty much shot,
so I’m fixin’ to learn how to be a better
herring fisherman,’” Rose adds. “‘I’m
just going to stay out of the way of the
leaders, learn to read the water and do
my own thing.’ That’s what I did, and I
caught over 14 pounds. I could walk
away from there saying to myself, ‘Well,
it didn’t get the best of me.’ I left on a
positive note. And I’m better prepared
for a herring fishery the next time we
fish one.”
For his part, Reehm is used to mak-
ing comebacks. Earlier this year, at the
FLW Tour stop at Lake Travis, he was in
108th place after the first day, but by
tournament’s end he was in fourth. At
the Cup, Reehm staked his strategy on
a pattern that didn’t pan out any better
than Rose’s.
“On the morning of the second day,
I’m analyzing what to do. Realistically,
I’m out of it. So if I’m not in it to win it
after day one, I’m in it for a check,” says
the Texan, who recently moved to
Louisiana. “Now my goal is to make the
top 20 – that’s the next check level. I
said to myself, ‘OK, I need to go back
and learn how to fish blueback her-
ring.’ I went back to points and places
where I knew there should be herring.
I had an ima Skimmer Grande and a
Zoom Super Fluke. I started running a
one-two punch. I lost several fish doing
that, but ended up grinding out about
16 pounds. I had the bites to have a
20-pound-plus bag, but I lost fish. So it
cost me $5,000, but at least I put
myself in a position to do some good.
When I decide I don’t have a chance to
win, I establish mini goals to salvage
what I can, even if there’s no check
involved.”
Which brings us to the point of even
trying to scramble out of a deep hole:
Win or lose, good or bad, every tourna-
ment is the building block in a career –
or should be. The best don’t spend a lot
of time wondering what it would be like
to win a championship or what it would
mean to their personal circumstances.
They don’t stake everything on winning
and then fall apart when things don’t go
their way.
The best spend most of their time
figuring out how to catch fish when the
odds seem against it. The best are con-
summate problem solvers, and their
determination to go around seemingly
impassable obstacles ultimately con-
verts them into champions.
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