No question, tournament angling is real athletic competition. As in other sports, competitive fishermen show individual variations in natural talent. Regrettably, however, there are also wide individual differences in dedication and commitment to improvement.

Remember that guy in high school who made the team purely on the basis of his natural athleticism? He didn’t do extra practice, he didn’t really push himself, he just showed up with enough God-given talent that he was able to play without doing much work.

The world of tournament fishing also contains such individuals. It says here this is not the kind of competitor you want to be, however. Rather, this is the guy you should strive to pass on the leaderboard in tournaments. And you can, if you are willing to put in the time, hone your skills and practice.

Practice fishing

Practice fishing, to most competitive anglers, means going to a lake and using the skills and techniques they already have to locate fish prior to a tournament. However, that is a far cry from what practice is in other sports.

No reasonable basketball coach, for example, would spend three days just scrimmaging prior to a game. But that is essentially what tournament fishermen do. If you went to your son’s or cousin’s basketball practice and all the coach did was throw a ball out on the court, divide the kids into “shirts and skins” and let them play, you would pop a cork!

And rightly so. At least for basketball, you recognize that just playing the game is not an efficient way to improve. It is very difficult to learn a new technique under the constraints of a game situation. Good basketball players practice a wide range of specific offensive and defensive drills. They run plays over and over again, trying different variations to see which ones work best.

Do you do that in your practice fishing? I am willing to bet you do not. To extend our analogy, a good basketball player has to be able to dribble with both hands. If you are right-handed, you may recall the frustrations of practicing your left-hand dribble. When you finally got it and did the crossover dribble in a game, blowing by some surprised opponent on the left side....well, that was a great day!

Can you cast with your left hand? It’s not a big deal, you say. Casting left-handed wouldn’t make much difference during the course of a season. That opinion, and others like it, might be worth reconsidering.

Like some of you, I fish pro-am tournaments from the back of the boat. Because of that, I have to be able to cast left-handed. When a right-handed pro is on a dock pattern, my right-hand cast is useless. On more than a few occasions, I have watched pros drive away from dock fish they missed because they could not get back to them with a left-handed presentation. In one instance, I caught the 3-pounder that would have won the tournament for the guy up front.

Individual skill development

Okay, so maybe casting left-handed doesn’t interest you. However, as you review your tournament performance from 2005 and set your goals for 2006, I strongly encourage you to build into your schedule dedicated time for individual skill development.

We have talked in previous columns about the importance of cataloging your strengths and weaknesses. At least on an annual basis, you need a critical analysis of your skills. All good competitors do this. However, most talented athletes in other sports use the observations and insights of their coach.

Unless you have taken previous advice from this column and found yourself a mentor, you’re stuck having to evaluate your own performance, an undertaking that includes potential fraud and deception.

Whether it’s deep cranks, Senkos or drop-shotting, you need to pick two or three specific fishing techniques in which you are not currently an expert and build a practice schedule to increase your proficiency.

You could also pick secondary dimensions like getting better at driving your boat in rough water or learning more about your electronics. Seriously, how many of those 6 zillion features on your state-of-the-art LCD menu do you truly understand?

I know it sounds boring to go out on a lake with only a drop-shot rod in hand and just do that for several hours. It’s especially difficult to stay with it when you know there is a great topwater bite up near shore.

Go back to the left-hand dribble. You didn’t learn that in five minutes or in one day, did you? There were plenty of times in the driveway at home when you kept practicing instead of taking off with your buddies. But the first time you successfully used that dribble in a game, it made it all worthwhile, wouldn’t you say?

How many tournaments did you have last year where one more good fish would have made a big difference? Are you willing to work at it and do real practice, or are you just going to show up and scrimmage again this year?

Your circuit is no different than the Wal-Mart FLW Tour. Every year, young anglers who are willing to work hard and practice are finishing ahead of guys with more experience. In competitive fishing, as in many other sports, if you’re not seriously practicing and getting better, you’re falling behind.

Jay T. McNamara, Ph.D., L.P., is a psychologist, who is also an avid bass and walleye angler. With more than 26 years of professional experience complemented by participation in competitive fishing at local and national levels, he is uniquely qualified to illustrate how performance psychology principles apply to tournament fishing.