Sarley: How I learned not every tournament pro knows what he’s doing

I follow the comings and goings of the various pro fishing tournament trails. But I have come to the realization that my tournament days have come to an end.

To be honest, my tournament days never really began. I fished a number of bass and walleye tournaments as a co-angler. I fished as a “celebrity” in some charity events. That is about the extent of my tournament career.

The tournaments used to pair top pros with amateurs every day. I aways thought this was money well spent by a fisherman to spend a day in a boat with a top pro, learning his secrets and methods. The top tourneys don’t use amateurs any more.

For my first event, I decided to enter an RCL walleye event on the Illinois River out of Spring Valley in 2003. RCL was the predecessor to the FLW event, which has morphed into today’s Major League Fishing. I used to fish for sauger and walleyes on the Illinois quite a bit, so I didn’t really feel out of place.

The co-angler’s main job was to listen and keep his mouth shut and to net the professional’s fish if he was reeling one in. I could do that.

For the first day of this two-day event, I drew a little-known pro from Wisconsin. He had pre-fished the river for a few days but told me his fortunes had not been good. When we hit the water, I could understand why that was.

We pulled orange jigs with crawlers and couldn’t get a fish to bite. He was fishing too fast, letting the current control his boat rather than him fighting the current to keep his presentation vertical. I knew we were moving too fast to attract fish, but co-anglers are not allowed to give tips or suggestions. The cos have to remain silent.

After a half-day of no bites, I couldn’t control myself. I told him we were going too fast and, to boot, I told him we should be using chartreuse jig heads. He put me in my place. His response was, “I’m the pro here and I’ve been fishing this speed and using orange jigs for the past week while I was pre-fishing.”

I asked him what kind of success he had found and he told me: “Not too good. A lot like today.” I was speechless. The famous quotation, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” is often attributed mistakenly to Albert Einstein, but it sure fits this situation well.

All of a sudden, my pro told me to start tying Rapalas onto our lines. We were going to troll. I was amazed. We had been jigging for hours on hard bottoms. Now he wanted to troll crankbaits over a section of the river that had a bottom littered with trees and branches. I told him it was a bad idea, but he insisted it would work.

I kid you not, in 15 minutes, we snagged six times and lost six lures when our lines broke. No fish, of course, just lost time working on our knot tying skills. We went back to jigging, to no avail.

At day’s end, we had caught absolutely zero fish. That was quite an embarrassing weigh-in to attend. There were a grand total of 165 two-man teams in the tournament. Only a mere seven teams had the dubious result of catching no fish at all. I was mortified to be one of them.

They pulled the names for our partners for the second day of the event. I was paired with Ron Seelhoff. Seelhoff, a crop duster by trade from Colorado, was the all-time money leader in professional walleye fishing. He was a legend in the sport and was also known to be one of the crankiest so-and-sos to ever pick up a walleye rod. I felt my body becoming covered with sweat. I didn’t belong in the company of a legend like Seelhoff.

I retired to my hotel room and called Ron. I said hello and Seelhoff responded with: “Oh great. I get stuck with one of the only idiots in the tournament who doesn’t know how to catch even one stinking walleye. What the hell. My luck is going from bad to worse.”

I didn’t sleep a wink that night in fear of Day 2.