After the Bassmaster Classic in Birmingham, Ala., all but two of the runners-up wore distant, wrung-out, disappointed expressions.
Jordan Lee and Doug Thompson looked exuberant.
Lee qualified for the Classic by winning the collegiate national championship. His sixth-place, $22,000 finish was the highest ever for a college angler in the Classic. His performance exceeded all expectations.
Thompson, of Mabelvale, was the least heralded of the three Arkansans in the Classic. Mark Davis of Mount Ida won the Classic in 1995, as well as three Angler of the Year titles. Stephen Browning of Hot Springs was in his ninth Classic.
Thompson, a systems analyst for Acxiom Corp., qualified for the Classic by winning the southern region in the BASS Nation Championship at Lake Dardanelle in October 2013. The BASS Nation was formerly known as the BASS Federation. Most of its members still call it that. The late Bryan Kerchal was the only Federation angler to ever win the Classic (1994).
Against that backdrop, little was expected of Thompson, but he acquitted himself admirably by finishing ninth and winning $20,500. He finished the first day 44th in a field of 55 with only four bass weighing 12 pounds, 7 ounces. Lake Guntersville is, after all, arguably the best bass lake in America where one needed 20 pounds to stay in contention, and where a few caught more than 30 pounds in a day.
Instead of getting swamped, Thompson caught 22-7 the second day to qualify for the championship round, and he finished with 25-5 for a total of 60-3, just 7-6 away from the $300,000 title.
The instinctive reaction is obvious. With a better first day, Thompson would have won. He dismissed that observation, saying a better performance in the first day might have introduced other elements that could have changed things for the worse. For starters, he abandoned his unproductive areas after the first day and found better areas.
“If I had caught more fish on Day 1, I might not have fished those other areas or might not have fished them as hard,” Thompson said. “It might have kept me from doing as well as I did.”
His satisfaction came from interpreting clues from a lake he’d never fished to finish better than most of the most celebrated names in the business. Kevin VanDam, Mike Iaconelli, Skeet Reese, Gary Klein, Ish Monroe and Jason Christie were all in this tournament. Thompson beat them all.
“Regardless of the enormity of the tournament and the theatrics of the tournament, when you boil it all down, it’s still a fishing tournament,” Thompson said. “The guy with the most weight wins the tournament, but in the Classic there are a lot of elements to deal with. You’ve got boat traffic, spectators. I learned a lot about how to manage all of that in this event. If I make it back, I’ll know what to look for, and I’ll be able to manage it better.”
When a game plan collapses in the first day of a multiday tournament, it takes discipline to stick to the plan. It also takes a lot of discipline, and a lot of courage, to abandon a game plan that you know is outdated. You don’t just know it, Thompson said. The fish tell you.
“You have to let the fish lead you,” Thompson said. “You take the information you get from them and put the puzzle together. I had to trust my instincts. The better anglers are the ones who can scrap what they learned in practice and adjust to changing conditions.”
That sounds like Rick Clunn, a four-time Classic champion who missed the Classic this year. He’s always considered the tactical aspects of fishing to be extensions of the mind.
“I’ve studied a lot of his articles,” Thompson said. “He intrigues me. He talks about the intuitive side of fishing instead of relying on your intellectual side.”
Despite the scale of the Classic, Thompson said he never felt overwhelmed or pressured. Well, maybe a little on the second day, when he considered the possibility of coming onstage with no fish to weigh.
“Most of the pressure on me was to do well for the people who wished me well, and for the Federation,” Thompson said. “Once I got on the water, I was comfortable.”
Sports, Pages 22 on 02/27/2014