Let’s talk about something that can make or break an angler’s season. You often hear confidence talked about in sports … and for good reason. The best athletes often have a certain type of quiet confidence in themselves. In fishing, this confidence must go beyond believing in yourself, you also have to trust your equipment. As my college baseball coach used to say, confidence comes from practice and preparation. Let’s talk about what confidence looks like in fishing, how to gain it, and the fine line between confidence and overconfidence.

Confidence in fishing certainly includes your belief in your own ability to adapt and put fish in the boat in any given scenario. The time when this becomes most evident is during in-tournament adjustments. Anglers who have confidence in themselves tend to adjust quicker than those who second guess themselves. For instance, when a weather front is moving in, a confident angler will often switch presentations to capitalize on this feeding window even if it’s not something that has produced earlier in the week.

At Millwood, it was very evident during practice which anglers had confidence in themselves, and which anglers were already beaten. It took a few years for me to develop the belief that I’m good enough to have a successful tournament even without a productive practice. Now, I’m able to approach practice without the pressure that I put on myself before.

All anglers will tell you that they’re confident, but sometimes this isn’t the case. So where does true confidence come from? Let’s dive into that. The reason some anglers can switch presentations with a weather front moving in while others will stick with what was working yesterday is because confident anglers have made that adjustment 100 times in the past and they know it works. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but these anglers know how to stack the odds in their favor.

I tell my college anglers that the time to practice new presentations and improve decision-making skills is when you’re at home fishing locally. Here, you’re able to make 10 wrong decisions without fear of failure. After you’ve seen the decision to pull over and fish an isolated target that the wind is hitting just right result in a kicker fish, it’s way easier to make that decision with implications on the line. The most successful anglers know that even minute changes in the conditions around your boat call for an adjustment in presentation, bait color, or profile.

There are cases where anglers can be too confident. You know the type, the local guy that has never won an event who swears up and down that there’s only one bait that you should be throwing. Overconfidence translates to being stubborn and a reduced desire to learn new tricks. If the last five years have exposed anything in the fishing industry it’s that if you’re not constantly learning you’re falling behind.

I describe the type of confidence that I want my anglers to carry as a “hungry confidence.” The type where they’ve put in the work to believe in the decisions they are making, but humble and hungry enough to know that there’s more to learn and more work to be done. This type of confidence leads to an angler continuing to work hard, thus developing more confidence.

So goes the cycle.

Some of the best anglers in the world possess this hungry confidence. You’ll never see them second-guessing their decisions … even if they don’t pan out. However, they will also be the first to inquire about new techniques, new technology, and recent trends. As an NPFL angler, I’ve had a bit of success and have a lot of confidence in my ability to go win tournaments. I’m also realistic enough to know that I’m not the best at every aspect of this game. When I’m home, I’m always working to improve and learn other anglers’ approaches to success. I’m certain that success is very rarely random.

Lay Lake is coming up fast … and I’m hungry!