By Ken Smith
February 10, 2015
Granted maybe he wasn’t talking about fishing, but Mike Tyson once famously responded to a series of questions from reporters prior to a fight. They were discussing his opponent’s style and how his opponent had a game plan to defeat him. Tyson famously responded, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, then like a rat they stop in fear and freeze.”
I think this quote goes way beyond the boxing ring into most aspects of life, but for us hardcore tournament fisherman it seems particularly appropriate. A football field is always 100 yards long. A basketball goal is 10 feet off the ground. It’s said the hardest thing to do in professional sports is to hit a major league baseball, but at least you can see the baseball, or at least glimpse it if it’s going 90+. A tournament fisherman’s playing field is acres and acres, miles and miles. Usually we can’t see what we are trying to catch, and sometimes, actually more often than not, our “opponents” simply do not have an interest in playing the game with us. How hard would it be to hit a baseball if the pitcher refused to throw the pitch?
