6/24/2011
Mental Fishing - Intellectual Humility
with Charles Plott of PAS Profile

Humility in this sense is NOT thinking less of your ability or judgment. I mean humility in the sense that you recognize and disregard your personal preferences and biases when on the water. The critical thinker assesses the circumstances and what the fish are doing/not doing and puts him/herself in the place of the fish. But, the angler cannot put onto the fish human qualities and decision making skills.

The best anglers are always thinking is ahead of the fish, while most of us are worried about what the fish are doing. Great anglers are thinking about where they are going as much as where they are at right now.”

Humility implies it is important for the angler not to so highly regard his or her beliefs. Instead there is an urgency to question beliefs and perceptions to make sure they are valid. The best way to do this is to ask oneself, “What else can this information mean?” “Does all of this add up to something else?”
The opinions of others are not discounted just because they aren’t as good as you at finding or catching fish. Humility means you look for the truth everywhere. You take in information quietly and systematically. It values unworthy or bad information for what it is and uses it to paint the picture of the real truth.

We all have blind spots. The humble critical thinker has fewer blind spots. They self-analyze! The coaching great Bear Bryant hired scouts through a third party to scout his Alabama teams. He wanted to know what gifted observers saw when they watched his Alabama teams. Why? Because he knew that he was not able to see things objectively. One scout noted that on seventy percent of third downs with less than five yards to go that Bryant’s team ran to the right side. Bryant thought that his play calling was much too predictable.
Who do you have exploring your blind spots? Can you objectively look at yourself and your decision making?

There is a fact that must admit: We live to prove ourselves right!
We have beliefs and act upon those beliefs. We are all “egocentristic.” That is, we see life from our point of view and assume that is the truth. Great performance decision makers have the ability to see beyond themselves and not assume they automatically see the truth. In fact, they assume just the opposite (this is humility) – that they are not seeing the whole truth. Then, they go looking for the truth they might be missing.

Another angler told me how he makes decisions to move on from a place that isn’t producing or to stay and figure out how to catch the fish he believes are there. How he does that I cannot fully explain in this venue, but he told me that there is a weighing of time lost fishing versus the potential gain in weight that may or may not be at the next location that factor in to his decision making process.

All of that reminded me of the great baseball book, Money Ball by Michael Lewis. In it he tracks the Oakland A’s crazy formula for producing winning teams for a fraction of the cost of many top franchises. They valued certain skills, like on-base percentage, more than anything else. Management dictated to the manager not to bunt runners over because the “price of an out” was not worth the gaining of one base. They had analyzed the data, knew the value of being on base, the value of an out, and even the value of balls and strikes with certain pitch counts.

The greatest anglers do the same in some fashion. They are the best because they question their personal preferences. They do not assume their urges or impulses are right. And, they have the will power and energy to sort through it all.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com

6/20/2011
Mental Fishing - Intellectual Integrity
with Charles Plott of PAS Profile

Our first discussion on “critical thinking,” or what I call high performance decision making, starts with the concept of intellectual integrity. Let’s bring it down to the real world. Decision making in the arena of competition (competitive angling or the business world) starts with the ability to clear direct and refine the decision making process from all other factors.
In the world of bass fishing understanding what those “all other factors” are is the key. Each factor (weather, water temperature, wind, season, etc.) is an independent decision making process on its own. Golfers think they have it tough. Anglers face three or four times the number of decision making factors on a daily basis.

Intellectual integrity speaks to the ability of the angler to systematically assess each factor and then synthesize them into a unified outcome. What happens to most of us on the water is a reliance on assumptions to cover up for a pure lack of information and knowledge. Wisdom is the proper application of understanding and information. Being wise on the water demands honest, sound, and reliable information and thought.

Professional anglers have a list of information they need to know. They obtain that information through various channels. They are able to think through each factor and, with great wisdom, they assimilate it into a description of the water they are fishing on that day. This process is repeated throughout the day.

Here’s an application: Write down a list of all the information you need to know before you start fishing. Then, order your thinking based on the implications of the basic conditions in which you will be fishing.

It is like a pilot working through the pre-flight process of checking out the plane before taking off. The pilot gets a weather briefing and files a flight plan. Critical areas of the plane and engine are examined before starting the engine. The engine itself is put through its paces before running down the runway and launching into the air. It is the same process each and every time! There are check lists because it is too important to be left purely to memory.

Like a pilot, the angler faces an ever-changing environment that must be assessed and reassessed constantly. Experience and powers of observation are critical. Pilots are taught how to reason critically. They have practiced and continue to practice high-pressure situations to make sure their thinking possesses that quality of “integrity.” Emotions like fear blur the decision making process at the very time it must be pure and clear.

On the water, it might not have the life or death component that flying a plane has, but the fear of not finding fish or not catching the fish you know are there distorts the thinking process. To improve as an angler you must rise above the confusion and insecurities to think through what is happening and making the crucial adjustments. There may need to be some trial and error to clear up the picture. One angler recently told me that eliminating options is just as important as finding something that works. “What they don’t bite tells as much or more than finding something they will bite,” he said.

Intellectual integrity is never perfectly achieved, but the great degree you possess on the water the better your decision making will. Add to that a recollection of the past and you will move ahead as an angler very rapidly. I advise clients to create an angling journal. Elite pros are blessed with an unbelievable memory and an ability to cross-reference between similar situations they have faced over several decades of competitive fishing. Most of us need to write the stuff down and keep it with us in order to make the most of our experiences on the water.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com

5/10/2011
Mental Fishing - Critcal Thinking Explored


Recent discussions with a top angler and a book on critical thinking have me searching for the holy grail of competitive bass fishing. I have long understood that it is the decision making ability of elite anglers that truly sets them apart. The greatest component of that decision making is undoubtedly experience. More specifically, it is the ability to access and utilize that experience and make instance relevant decisions.

I am not sure if anyone challenges these high-level decision makers to actually assess what it is they do on the water in the heat of battle. I am not sure if the anglers are able to put into words what is behind the decisions they make. It is far too complicated. It has reached a level most closely akin to instinct or second nature.

There are several components of this whole discussion that need to be clearly stated so no confusion arises. Competitive bass fishing has two distinct pieces of the decision making skills. First, the angler must “find fish.” That seems simplistic but it is in fact a huge decision making process. The angler must think like a fish. More on that later. Second, the angler must catch the fish he or she has found. From the thousands of lures and techniques, the fisherman must hit on those things that trigger the fish to bite.

It is safe to say, elite level anglers are skilled at finding and catching fish. Most possess greater skill at one of the two decision making skills. The winner of a competition typically has done both the finding of and the catching of the fish the best that week. It can be often said that the winner found a solution that was unique.

I live near Lake Guntersville. When the pros hit the water there, “finding fish” is rarely the problem. A novice can get on the water in Guntersville and catch fish. So the issue is finding “the right fish,” meaning the larger bass. Bags of five fish weighing over thirty pounds are not that unusual. So, I can say with authority that “catching” the bigger fish is the real issue on Lake Guntersville. There are large populations of big fish. Dozens of anglers will find them. Only a few will figure out how to catch them on a consistent basis.

There are other lakes and rivers quite different than Guntersville. On those bodies of water the mental challenge is “finding fishing.” Even the elite anglers can worry about catching a limit each day at these places. Then the question will be whether or not they find fish of any size. Some pros love more challenging locations because they highlight a particular skill (finding fish or catching fish).

Ask yourself these questions: (1) Am I better at finding fish or catching fish? (2) Do I fish a body of water that demands fish-finding skills or fish-catching skills? (3) Which of the two must I improve upon in order to catch more fish and better fish?

Improving your mental game begins with clearly defining what the mental game challenge is. There are many components to making great decisions on the water. Ultimately I want you to see what Richard W. Paul and Linda Elder describe in their book Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life as “disciplined thinking.” Using part of their outline, I come to the conclusion that catching fish consistently and catching high quality fish requires intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance, intellectual balance, intellectual confidence, intellectual courage, and intellectual autonomy. I will explore each of these separately in the blogs to come.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com

3/7/2011
Mental Fishing - The Voices in My Head
Examining Self Talk

We all have a dialogue running through our head. Some of us have a much richer and louder internal dialogue than others. Fishing does little to silence or muffle that dialogue. Deliberate sports like fishing, golf, bowling, and hunting are like rich soil for the weeds of doubt, indecision, and low self-esteem to sprout up and grow out of control.

Directing and confronting negative self-talk is a skill that is worth developing. Every angler, even the weekend fishermen just taking his/her family out for a few hours on the water know what I am talking about. You pull up on a spot with an idea of what to do (usually because it worked last time) and in fifteen or twenty minutes without the slightest sign of a fish, the doubt and negative self-talk starts firing up.

“I can’t let the kids down. I told them this was a great spot and now this: Nothing!”

“My wife let me out of the family reunion to come fishing today and this is what I get? When do I make a move? When do I change things up and try something else? What would I try or where would I go to catch a fish?”

Usually the things of the world start to creep into what is happening on the water. I see it all the time. A bad week of work, where everything you did pretty much fell apart on you, and it won’t take much before you start thinking the same thing will happen on the water.

I call it “telling myself the truth.” I have to confront those thoughts with the truth.

You say, “Well, the truth is a stunk it up at work this week. Every important decision I made I got wrong, so it is no different on the water now!”
The truth: What you did at work has no bearing at all with what is happening on the water.

I ask you this – what good comes from doubt, fear of failure, or indecision on the water? Absolutely nothing! Nothing productive comes from those things, yet we feel entitled to have them. In total honesty, we would have to admit we almost want to have that negative experience.

I know those weeks at work or at home with the family where you just can’t do anything right. No one is happy with you. At a very deep and personal level you feel like a victim. Ask yourself this, “Just how easy is it to feel like a victim when you are fishing?” Answer: It is almost a given when you go fishing! Start with one simple fact: You will catch a fish on a very small percentage of your casts. Perhaps ninety percent or more of your efforts will result in nothing. Zero. Failure.

Refuse to give into the negative self-talk. Learn to recognize it. Learn to laugh at it. And, learn to redirect it with the truth. If idle hands are the devil’s workshop, then an unoccupied mind must be the devil’s assembly line.

Three tips for redirecting those voices in your head:

1. Talk yourself through each cast and retrieve. Mumble to yourself. Describe where you want the lure to go when you cast. Talk yourself through the retrieve. Sure, others might think you are crazy but your mind cannot run wild when you are consciously guiding the dialogue.

2. Confront negative self-talk with the truth. I call it “honest, positive truths.” For instance, two hours without a bite is not “awful.” It might be “undesirable” or “unfortunate” and it could mean “I am really close to catching a bunch of them now.” Avoid awfulizing the situation. Just calling it unfortunate changes the internal experience around.

3. Examine your self-esteem. Most of us look to please others or feel good about ourselves based on our performance. Negative self-talk feeds off of both of those. The truth is this: We are all immensely valuable creatures no matter what happens while we are fishing. In fact, fishing should have no negative impact on how we feel about ourselves at all. It is meant to be fun, therefore it should be like icing on the cake of life, not life itself.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com

2/11/2011
Mental Fishing - Developing Mental Toughness
Make your Mind Over the Matter

A local sports psychologist conducts a Mental Toughness Boot Camp. I find that both comical and spot on! His program is a 10 week journey that hopes to graduate folks decidedly more mentally tough. I don’t think you need a Boot Camp to make you tough, maybe enlisting in the Army and going to Basic Training will suffice.

All kidding aside, gaining mental toughness on the water is a necessity for tournament anglers and can greatly benefit the part-time competitor or recreational angler. During last year’s BASS Elite Series, one of my clients had a goal during a tournament that related to being more mentally tough. He simply wanted to have a plan, stick with it, and never doubt it during the time on the water. I told him that if he did that and did not catch a single fish he was successful that day in growing his mental toughness.

Another client, known for following his hunches and running all over the lake during competition made a goal to limit himself to a portion of the lake and not give in to the urge to cover the whole lake. Both anglers benefited greatly from the exercise. They each caught more fish and better fish by limiting themselves in one way or another.

Tip #1: Build toughness by limiting yourself in some fashion. Use non-competitive days on the water to draw lines for yourself and don’t cross them. For instance, limit the time, space, techniques, lures, or the speed of the retrieve just to see what happens. Take a specific type of crank bait and see how many ways you can fish it and catch fish. If you love fishing shallow, take a day and only fish deep structure or suspended fish. I cannot describe all the emotions, thoughts, and insights you will have coming away from that approach.

Mentally tough anglers can maintain their focus and concentration for extremely long periods of time. They make excellent use of a greater percent of casts than do other anglers.

Tip #2: How many accurate casts and quality retrieves can you make in a row? Demand more out of yourself and measure how you are doing. A quality associated with professionalism is dependability and durability. In a sense that is what I am looking for with this drill. How many times in a row can you make an accurate cast, retrieve the lure as well as you can do it, and repeat this over and over again. Can you get to where you can maintain the highest quality effort you have for an hour? Two hours? Most of us would be good to get fifteen minutes under our belt.

Mental and emotional toughness is directly related to nutrition, rest, and physical conditioning. One pro I work with has some real challenges physically. Sport-related injuries have him in chronic pain and great physical conditioning and proper diet minimize that impact the injuries have on his angling. But a couple of nights without good rest and he is a basket case. Stack a few tournaments on top of each other and he doesn’t have time to recover mentally or physically.

Tip #3: Exercise regularly and do so with a plan and a purpose. Eat right and get a proper amount of sleep. These things will most definitely help you on the water. The mind (your decision making and emotional control) begins to weaken thirty to forty minutes prior to you sensing hunger! Anglers are notorious for skipping meals and downing caffeine and sugar while on the water. Nothing could be worse for you. Drinking water and snacking regularly on properly balanced food items (like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or nutritional bars) will do wonders for your mental toughness. I point out to clients on a regular basis how circumstances they were not aware of probably contributed to a breakdown they experienced in competition.

I consider the “mental game” to be controlling those things over which you have control. Rest, nutrition, and exercise fall under your control. You can train yourself to be more mentally tough on the water. You don’t have control over the fish but you have control over you. Take full advantage over what you can do to improve and I promise you will improve.

Make your plan - pasprofile.com

2/2/2011
Mental Fishing - Prep for the Big Event - Part 3
The Classic Approaches

Steps One and Two prepare us for the third and final piece of preparation for a Big Event. Step Three: Getting in Character and Staying in Character.
Competitive athletics allows the participant to be like an actor on stage. On stage, you aren’t who you really are. Superman can fly and is bulletproof on stage. Dustin Hoffman once played a woman on the big screen. In fact, he was a more successful actor (actress) in the story than he was trying to play male roles. Competition is not “real life.”

Some of the most famous anglers have an on-water identity that isn’t anywhere close to their off-the-water identity. Kevin VanDam and Skeet Reese may bring a certain intensity and focus and systematic approach to what they are doing on the water. Ike and Swindle may react to the situation at hand and change their strategy twenty times in a day, throwing dozens of different baits and running all over the lake. Those are their on-water personas and may not be who they are off the water.

Who are you on-the-water? If you don’t know the answer to that, then prepping for the Big Event may be difficult. Success for the pros is defined in part by answering this question: Did I fish my way today? If you don’t know who you are in competition, then you cannot have “your way” in mind when you assess things at the end of the day.

Far too often “I” show up in competition rather than the character that will be most successful. For instance, I need to be talkative and creative to be my best in competition. My nature is to turn quiet and predictably safe in competition. The result is never good when I am in that mode. When I am light-hearted and creative (within my general strategy for the day), I am my best.

Fishing offers the angler so many days to try out new identities. You can create imaginary competitions or engage in a wager with a few buddies to set the stage (pun intended) for trying new characters to play while on the water. It won’t take too many tries for you to start finding your niche.
To sum up my three simple steps to preparing for the Big Event, first clearly define how you are going to judge success.

Don’t make it how many fish or the weight of the fish you catch the sole measure of success. Second, know how to get yourself into the Zone. Practice it every time you get on the water. And, finally get in character and stay in character while you are competing.

Do not let distractions, the unexpected, or even failure to catch fish get you out of your on-water identity.

If you do those three things the next time the Big Event comes around, I know you will have more success on the water and will feel better about the experience afterward.

Find your on the water identity, go to www.pasprofile.com

1/27/2011
Mental Fishing - Prep for the Big Event - Part Two
Getting in the Zone

Once you have step one out of the way and you know that “success” is working the process you have created to the best of your ability, then we can move on to the next piece of puzzle.

Step Two: Getting in the Zone

That sounds mystical and scary for most of us but it is no different than delivering a killer presentation (life we talked about preparing for in step one). The Zone is simply a state of high awareness and functioning. If we try too hard, the Zone doesn’t occur. If we don’t have a purpose and a plan, the Zone can’t be found. When we are not consciously thinking about the outcome and we get wrapped up in the process of fishing and we are working according to plan, the Zone is likely to occur.

Not finding fish, missing bites, dealing with distractions all present challenges to the Zoning affect. Having a plan to deal with each of those situations allows you to stay on task and sustain your motivation and energy. Great anglers are like other great athletes in this one way: Successes build their confidence, and distractions and failures build their confidence as well.

You say, “What?!”

That is right, failures and distractions build their confidence. The longer you go not finding fish, the closer you are to finding them. Missing fish or losing fish means you are on the fish. Engine problems give you a chance to demonstrate your skills at a higher level – it just increases the challenge before, and you love challenges.

The simple and natural thing to do is give away your sense of control over the situation and become a victim of the fish or a victim of the circumstances. I have had clients in BASS events go most of the day with little or no success and yet they remained on point and in the Zone. Ultimately, they had a break through where in the past they would have given up emotionally and mentally and never have given themselves a chance to succeed their last few hours on the water.

One key to finding and staying in the Zone on the water is “valuing every cast.” Fish each and every cast with excellence. It is not only a key to Zoning but it builds a sense of respect and integrity about what you are doing. I used a work example last time and I think it applies again. Ask yourself how often you are sloppy and unprofessional in your work setting? Not at any time, I pray!

Fish with that same sense of professionalism and respect you show your job. It will be amazing, I promise you.

Some of the pros act like they won the lottery when they catch a four-pounder. Others simply land the fish, put it in the live well, and go back to the task at hand. Some of the celebrations are for the fans and some guys use it to pump themselves up and keep the Zone going on and some don’t need to do anything. You have to figure out your own way with that stuff.

A brain surgeon friend of mine told me about a twelve-hour surgery he did recently. I said, “Twelve hours! How can you stand there that long?”
He replied, “When it is done it seemed like it had been thirty minutes. Only when I looked at the clock did I realize just how long it had been.”

He had been in the Zone! He was working the steps, handling the distractions, maintaining his energy and motivation, and time passed quickly. The same will happen on the water for you when you practice getting in the Zone every time you go fishing.

To find your zone, visit: www.pasprofile.com

1/19/2011
Mental Fishing - Prep for the Big Event - Part One
Develop a Plan for Success

Bass fishing and NASCAR share something in common. Both start their season with the Big Event. Granted, the Classic is really the culmination of the previous season’s work, in all reality it kicks off the new season of competition.

This presents the anglers with an interesting challenge. Months removed from the heated competition of the regular season and the post-season events, they are required to gear it up again and be on the top of their game for the biggest prize in the sport. The truth is that only a few find that “zone” fresh out of the box in the new year.

Keys for maximizing your performance in Big Events are no different than the top anglers in the world. With my clients I emphasize several simple keys to success. The first one is establishing a proper definition of “success.” Success is not necessarily winning the event. Most elite athletes will tell you “success is giving myself a chance to succeed.” In other words, they are not getting in their own way or not trying too hard or not being afraid to fail. In positive terms, they focus on the process and realize their skills are sufficient to win and fishing to win is a state of mind.



Big Events, by definition, are special to sport and special to the competitors. That is not to be denied or ignored. Big Events get the juices flowing; get the imagination running wild, and the visions of the potential rewards disrupting your sleep. Those are just distractions! The best in sport know that. They want the pay-off at the end. They relish lifting the trophy overhead. But in the end they know that their only hope of doing so lies in their ability to simply go out and work the process before them.

Pros have a big advantage over the average competitive angler. That advantage is experience. I could probably accomplish heart surgery with an expert talking me through every step. No doubt it would take hours longer than necessary and my mental and emotional reserves would be expended in the process. Experienced surgeons can almost do the procedure in their sleep. It is no big deal. As fans of bass fishing, we put ourselves in the shoes of our favorite pro and imagine what the experience is like. The truth is this: We have no clue what it is like to be in their shoes!

Most of us work for a living and have “big meetings” to go to or “big presentations” to make. After awhile they are no big deal and become part of life. That is what the Classic is like for the pros. Just like you making the big presentation, they focus on the process, get good information, and execute a plan based on that information. You don’t know if your customer will love it or hate, but you do know how to do your best and let the chips fall where they may.

Try the same approach to your next Big Fishing Event and see if things work out better for you. Prepare for success by gathering good information ahead of time. Sort through that information and develop a plan for each day (at least a starting point plan and next couple of steps). Think through the best and worst scenarios and how you will respond to them. Plan for the unexpected. Write all of this down if that will help you on the water.

Then, define success as going out and executing your plan. Success is achievable each and every time you compete if you define it this way. Some days the fish won’t add up to victory but you will have been victorious the most important way.

Coming soon… Steps Two and Three to success.

www.pasprofile.com

1/12/2011
Mental Fishing - Becoming a Competitive Angler
Fish with Purpose

What truly separates the casual angler from the competitive anglers we see on television or speeding down the lake in their fancy paid-for boats? I believe truly competitive anglers separate themselves from the rest of us in their approach to the mental side of the sport.

I will give a few mental game ingredients a Pro brings to the table.

#1 Pro’s have perfected something crucial to the sport. For most Pro’s that is a technique, but others have perfected utilizing technology to find fish better and faster than others. There are pro’s out there that are extremely good and a wide variety of techniques. I work with one professional bass fisherman who said he was most accomplished at casting. He caught fish others couldn’t get to because his ability to cast a lure was significantly better than his competitors. He could say he was any better than most when it came to retrieving the lure, but “his fish” were pretty much his to catch thanks to his ability to make long, accurate, and creative casts.

Application for the casual angler: Start perfecting something!

#2 Pro’s value every cast. This principle is true in its own way across nearly every sport. Basketball coaches preach “valuing every possession” or “valuing the ball” (when we have it, keep it; when we don’t have it, go get it!) My fishing clients know I spend a lot of time working with golfers and tell me they value every cast like a professional golfer values every putt. If you are a casual fisherman and want to start to understand the world the professionals live in, fish every cast like it is your last cast of the day.
This principle has a trickle down affect on everything a pro does!

It means they pay great attention to what might appear to be meaningless things. The care of their boat is paramount. The condition of their equipment is critical. Knots they tie are essential. Hook-sets and reducing opportunities for the fish to fight his way off the hook are turned into an art form. Proper, efficient use of the trolling motor and skilled positioning of the boat are foundational to success. Valuing every cast means valuing everything that goes into making that cast worth retrieving.

Application for the casual angler: Start paying attention to things that go into making every cast worth retrieving.

#3 Pro’s fish with a purpose. In practice they are gathering information and understanding the habitat they will be on for several days in a row. They want to find large populations of bass within that habitat. Some are looking for how their perfected techniques work within that habitat. They are paying attention to weather forecasts and using their experience to explore what those changes will do to the fish. Then, when it is time to fish, their focus is all about executing their strategy and making adjustments. It is problem solving in real time with their livelihood at stake.

Application for the casual angler: Have a purpose when you get on the water. Whether to just have fun or try to get better at some aspect of fishing; do it with a purpose and you will be rewarded.

Want to find your fishing purpose? Visit www.pasprofile.com

1/5/2011
Mental Fishing - Knowing Your Goal
Define Goals to Enhance Fishing Success

Competitive athletes have a simple goal when they compete: WIN! In most sports, bass fishing included, winning is reduced down to a process, that when executed properly will give the athlete the best chance to win.

The majority of bass fishing is not competitive. That simple fact clouds the mental aspects of fishing in ways few anglers realize. One philosopher said, “If you aren’t aiming at something, you mostly likely won’t hit it.” When you put your boat in the water or set off for your favorite pond to fish, do you know what your goal is for the day?

Why is it so important to have a goal? I guess I am asking you to express your goal(s) for one simple reason. Satisfaction, enjoyment, and fun occur when our expectations or goals are met. If you fail to set a clear goal, you are actually more likely to come away from the experience disappointed than fulfilled or happy.

The goal of “enjoying nature and the experience of being outside” is something pretty likely to be accomplished (maybe engine failure, sunburn, or a bad thunderstorm might dampen it a bit). The goal of “catching a lot of fish” may or may not play out too well. It gives you some direction and some sense of how you will measure success, but is totally dependent on the outcome. You will come home happy or sad.

“Exploring new water” or “trying out a new technique or lure” can be a great goal if the goal doesn’t change. With either approach, a few hours on the water without a bite quickly changes the goal for most of us. The new goal becomes “catch a fish!”

Pay close attention to your goals on the water. Your focus, enjoyment, and sense of accomplishment are directly tied to the goals you set. If you do not set the goals actively, you will set them passively. Unconscious goals are the recipe for moody and even miserable days on the water.

The very worst type of goal involves putting expectations on the fish! It sounds stupid to do so when you see it written in black and white, but it happens all the time. “Yesterday they were hitting top water stuff like crazy…”

When you go fishing several days in a row or even two or three times a week, this goal is sinister. I call it fishing behind the fish. Yes, they might do today what they did yesterday, but there is a good chance things are changing.

I believe strongly in the fact that the most consistent Elite anglers avoid this trap and constantly think “The fish are here now. Where are they going?” One Pro I work with was fishing schooling fish and when the bite stopped would throw a certain lure for several casts (not looking to catch fish) to turn the bite back on!

How he figured that one out I will never know, but see how he did not fall into a trap created by a goal to catch fish. He could only have discovered this by making his goal to “figure out what they are doing now.”

For me, fishing is problem solving. I like to solve complicated and unpredictable problems – that’s why I do mental game work with anglers! When I fish I simply enjoy being outside and trying to solve the problem. Notice my goal is “trying to solve the problem” and not “solving the problem.” That’s why fishing is so fun for me!

Visit Charles Plott at www.pasprofile.com

12/31/2010
Mental Fishing - Discovering Your Style
How Style Influences Performance

Everybody has their own personal style, I don’t mean what kind of clothes we like to wear, but the way in which we gather information, assimilate it, and make decisions. When someone in a performance field doesn’t know what their own style is could find themselves falling short of their potential.

Unconsciously, athletes all use their styles on their chosen playing field. From one player to the next, those styles will affect their ability to make decisions, make adjustments to those decisions, and event how they deal with competitive pressures.

In our society, stress carries a negative meaning, but not all stresses are bad. There is stress in most anything, laughing at jokes is a good stress, as is winning a game; but, the mounds of accumulated paperwork on our desks or the micromanaging, untrusting boss are typically negative stressors.

Whatever the stress is, our personal style can dictate how we manifest physical and mental stress. For some of us, stress can affect decision making, adjustment making, eye hand coordination and fine motor skills. For an angler, any of those things can lead to less than ideal performance on the water.

If an angler appears to be carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, they may hesitate in making decisions, and they may find themselves losing control of casts, causing them to fall short or wide of their targets.

Take another angler, who gets really wound up at the thought of fishing in a tournament. This angler may make too many impulsive, irrational decisions without thoroughly processing all of the information and stimuli, and their casts may become long, often past their targets, or splashing wildly due to overexerting themselves.

Either of these anglers is allowing their reaction to the situation to overtake their physical and mental skills. The stress of the situation has caused a breakdown in their process, likely because they didn’t have a handle on it all together.

To start with, an angler must begin to understand certain things about themselves. Are they a loner, hyper competitive, do they love solving the problem, and sticking with what they believe is the solution? Or, are they the type who likes to solve the problem on the fly, fishing on hunches, running and gunning.

Each of these anglers has a unique style. Their style dictates everything from the type of fishing presentations they prefer to use, to how they go about establishing a game plan, to how many rods and reels they have on the deck. None of these are meant to be taken in a negative way, in fact all of these things; when understood, can become a part of an angler’s success.

It all depends on how we take in information, and what we do with it. Do you like concrete details, or do you see a lot of possibilities? Do you base your moves on emotional gut reactions, or come to logical conclusions?

Understanding those things about yourself are just the first steps in understanding your mind, and becoming the angler you can be.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com

12/21/2010
Mental Fishing - Intro to the Mind
with Charles Plott

Every athlete needs to maintain a mental edge in order to perform at their highest potential. Sadly, many of them pay so much attention to their physical conditioning and skills and neglect the one aspect that may provide their greatest advantage – their mind.

After my undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama, then my Master’s program at Georgia State, I went into practice as a counselor in 1988. I soon found that I had a knack for working with athletes, and in 1996 started working as a Performance Consultant for athletes at all levels.

In 2006 I worked with student athletes in 18 different athletic conferences, and in 2008, I served as a personal consultant to Paul Azinger, the Captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup Golf team. That team beat Europe, and brought the Ryder Cup trophy back to the U.S. after three consecutive losses.

The difference in that team was that they began to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and each of them began to develop what I like to call a “Performance Identity.” That being a complete understanding in how they reacted to different circumstances mentally, how they liked to do things, and what their own individual style was. Al of those things helped the Captain organize the team for their tournament.

The difference in that team was Captain Azinger’s ability to recognize each player’s unique Identity, both on and off the course. That allowed him to create an atmosphere that fed their competitive egos, reduced their fear of failure, and resulted in pairings that made teamwork productive and fun. The result for Captain Azinger was an inspiring victory.

Over the past couple of years I began to work with bass anglers. In researching the sport, I poured through episodes of the Bassmasters on ESPN2, and I quickly came to the conclusion that being a successful tournament professional may be one of the toughest mental tasks in athletics.

Bass anglers not only require physical stamina, but, unlike most other athletes who get to take mental breaks between plays, innings or quarters; bass anglers must stay mentally in tune 100-percent of the time – for more than eight hours a day.

In working with anglers, like my other clients, I look to not only enhance their performance in their endeavors, but in their personal lives as well. My belief from years of counseling is that it is very difficult for a person to have peak performance professionally without with out improvement in their personal life.

My goal is to help people begin to recognize the “Mental Traps” they place on themselves that place limits on their ability to perform. I also look to help them find the “Performance Identity” that is based on their personality and experiences.

Fishing, like golf, requires a person to perform constant mental maintenance. That is one of the reasons why time on the water is so important. But, it is even more valuable to an angler who truly understands his mental makeup and his own personal characteristics, because that time is spent in a much more productive and efficient manner.

When a person looks at a skill, like driving a car, there are four levels of proficiency; Unconsciously Incompetent (bad and you don’t know it), Consciously Incompetent (bad and you know it) Consciously Competent (Good, but you have to think about it) and Unconsciously Competent (Good and you don’t have to think about it, otherwise known as “Being in the Zone”).

My goal is to help people achieve the level of Unconsciously Competent as quickly as possible – and it starts with knowing who you are as an athlete. Hopefully my contributions to Advanced Angler.com will help you get there.

Charles Plott, M.S. is a Performance Consultant. He brings two decades of experience helping individuals, teams, and businesses improve performance. Charles is a retired Licensed Professional Counselor, with over 20,000 hours of experience. His website is www.pasprofile.com