Should You Fish For a Limit?

Adjusting your mindset for the size of the tournament

(The writer's opinions and observations expressed here are his own, and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of FLW.)

Over the years I have often felt that the tournament slogan “five by three” was overrated because catching a limit of fish does not correlate to having a successful tournament. This is because often times if you are fishing to win a tournament you are targeting larger fish and getting fewer bites. On the flip side, catching five keepers doesn’t usually result in high finishes and cashing checks.

I still do believe that in a single-day event the best way to do well is to fish for quality and that chasing a limit is rather unimportant. Prior to fishing at the professional level the majority of events that I fished were one-day events and the hero to zero mentality was the approach I took. There were no points involved and big bags are needed to win events, so that what I fished for.

Since fishing the FLW Tour my mentality has changed from I approached local tournaments. I still don’t set out to catch a limit, but there is significant importance to securing five fish and obtaining as many points as possible. 

Let me explain.

My first three years on Tour I finished in the middle of the pack ending the year between 78^th and 88^th in the Angler of the Year points. I started questioning whether or not I could compete at this level and was trying to evaluate if I could make a career out of the sport I love. In order to figure out what I needed to improve on I went back and looked at each of my results from every tournament over that three-year span. I realized that there was a total of 60 potential fish I could weigh over the first two days of competition throughout the six scheduled tournaments. From 2011 to 2013, I brought nine, 13 and seven fish fewer than my 60 fish maximum. Obviously, that’s a lot of fish that I could have used to finish higher in each event, but just how much better would I have done?

The first thing I did was to look at each event in which I did not weigh a limit both days. I then figured the weight of a minimum-length fish to fill each empty limit spot. For example, if I was short a fish on Beaver Lake, I added in the weight of one 12-inch spotted bass – which I estimated to be about ¾-pounds. I then looked to see how much that additional weight would have moved me up in the standings for that event.

 After running the numbers, had I filled my limit each day with the minimum-length keeper I would have finished roughly 40^th in points all three years. Had I replaced a couple of those small keepers with 2 ½-pounders, I would have qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup all three years. In fact, this has held true in the four years I have not made the Forrest Wood Cup.

This just shows how important limits are in multi-day tournaments that have year-end championships.  Points are crucial and at the end of the season each point you can salvage by filling a limit may be the difference between fishing the championship or watching it from your couch. I still always target the fish I believe will give me my best chance of finishing highest, but if the day is not going well and I have a couple places I think I can catch small keepers relatively quickly I’m not afraid to give it some time knowing that at the end of the year it might make a difference.