Bobby Lane – Classic Wrap Up Lamenting Decisions Made and Pride in Havoc

Now that the Classic is over, I’ll turn my attention to the start of the Elite Series on the Harris Chain next week. But before I do, I think I’ll wrap up a few thoughts from the week and clear my head once and for all.

To put the whole thing in perspective, I finished ninth in a Bassmaster Classic; that’s not horrible. I mean, if I was told that I could place ninth at Harris Chain next week in a regular season, I’d be pretty happy with it. But, that was the Classic, and you don’t fish that tournament for second place.

I’m a little frustrated with my decision making process overall. I made my decisions and I did pretty well with everything in consideration. My only problem with my decisions is that I wasted my last practice day by re-running my route to Venice.

I needed to track one additional part of the route; which I ran right away in the morning, and I should have stopped at 8:30AM when I finished the part of the route that I needed. Instead of turning around and fishing close, I continued down all the way to Venice.

I wanted to learn the tides a little bit better, and I should have gone back and fished near the ramp. What is frustrating is that I had decided in my pre-practice research that one of the areas I wanted to check was around Lake Cataouatche. I’m not saying that I would have fished there, or been in the mix to win, but I should have at least gone there and given it an opportunity.

The biggest frustration of the whole tournament was the second day fog delay. I had put a 10:00AM time limit on my running to Venice again, and when they let us go at 9:45, I made the run.

I caught a lot of fish on Venice, and the third day was exactly how I thought it could be. I caught somewhere around 60 fish in three hours and weighed 18-pounds. It was sunny and calm, and they were chewing my new Berkley Havoc Craw Fatty.

Speaking of Havoc, the launch of the deal was really cool; to be on that stage with Skeet, Klein and Ike was something I’ll never forget. I’m really proud of the bait that I have my name on, and have been getting a bunch of comments from people all over the place; it’s a really cool deal.

Anyway, Harris Chain is next week, and I’m really looking forward to getting started. If the Classic showed me anything, I need to keep things simple. I’ll do the best that I can to make the right decisions and keep the clutter in my Skeeter down to a minimum. I’ve found when I do that, I have more fun, and catch more fish.

I’ll go out there and see what I can do, and I’ll talk to you after Harris Chain.