This Week @ Bass Edge

Making Sense: Rick Clunn on the Sensory Side of Fishing

When Rick Clunn first began his decades-long path to becoming the greatest angler, according to an ESPN fan poll, he had some doubts about what competitive fishing was all about.

“Even in the very beginning, if I was going to quit my real job and become a professional angler, one of the things I really had to determine was how much luck would control my fate,” Clunn recalls. “Even though I believed in my heart that the science and art of fishing could diminish luck down to where it wasn’t a factor, I still wasn’t convinced until Roland Martin won three times in a row. Although most of the competitors were moaning and groaning because of professional jealousy or whatever, I was tickled to death. When he won three in a row I knew the man had the science down to where he wasn’t allowing luck to play a very big role.”

As Clunn began the intellectual process of understanding the sport, he tuned in very clearly to aspects of fishing to which few of his colleagues were paying much attention.

“To me fishing is like martial arts; to really perfect it, it has to be a mind, body and soul journey. You have to understand all of those elements, and all of those elements have to work in harmony.”

On the mental side of fishing, Clunn’s approach begins with one basic tenet: Being aware is better than being smart.

“If you are a hunter or a fisherman, the most important thing is to bring your senses as close as you possibly can to the senses of the animal that you are pursuing, whether it’s a deer, a turkey or a fish.

“A lot of people ask: Is a fish smart? Most people would say no. I’m going to challenge that. That depends on how you define smart. If you define it as intellectual knowledge or book knowledge, of course a fish is not smart. But if you want to turnaround and define it from the perspective of a deer, a turkey or a fish that uses its senses to (survive) especially a mature one, then they are a hell of lot smarter than we are.”

Clunn believes sight is a critical tool to be honed by anglers. He focuses on seeing the lake in two ways. Focus vision is a concentrated view into a small area. This could be valuable in flipping or casting to visible structure. Wide-angle vision also has an important role in making the most of your visual senses. There are exercises off the water that can help develop visual awareness.

“You can do this driving down the highway. See the car ahead of you, but also switch back and see the cars beside you and behind you. In fishing and everything we do we have blind spots. It’s controlled by the way we see the world. When you drive to work everyday, you tend to look at the same things. If somebody is riding with you, and they say, ‘Hey look over there,’ often you look and say, ‘I’ve never seen that before, and I drive this way everyday going to work.’

“Fishermen do the same thing. We have these patterns; the way we run a lake will create blind spots. People mostly go from point A to point B and they cut all of the corners because they want to get there quick. But when you cut corners you create blind spots.”

Finding active fish demands awareness of bass behavior. Clunn began taking notes back in his pre-professional, bass-club days. He has always remained a student of the sport while becoming one of its finest teachers.

But it all has to be in harmony.

“If you understand the biology of fishing, and the behavior of fish, and the weather patterns and how it affects the fish, and if you don’t have the correct mechanics, it’s not as critical, but it will still affect your results. That’s what we are working with here, elevating all of those elements so that a person can achieve peak performance.”

Clunn’s harmony has come with a little perspective.

“Hey what are we talking about here. We are just talking about fishing, not one of the other really important things going on in the world. The best by product of all of this, if you do expand your awareness and when you are out on the lake and all of a sudden you are hearing things like the blue heron and other aquatic birds, and you are hearing fish hit on the water and smelling baitfish and seeing the raccoon walking down the bank … The biggest benefit is not that you have become a better fisherman, but the biggest benefit is that you have become more alive on the water.”