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Norman,
OK - California pro Jared Lintner seemed to have the Elite Series wired from the moment he stepped onto the national stage. He fished his way to an 18th place finish in the Angler of the Year race in his rookie season of 2006 and followed that up with a veteran-like campaign in 2007. He spent most of the latter year in the top four of the AOY race before settling for 5th at the end of the season.
To those who followed such things, he seemed a lock to get better and better and reserve a spot in the Bassmaster Classic for the foreseeable future.
Then came his third big league season of 2008. The wheels didn’t quite fall off – after all, at 47th overall he still beat more than half the field – and he was never in danger of not requalifying, but the results were far from what the affable pro expected based on past experience.
“That first year, I was just winging it,” Lintner remembered. “I had never fished outside of California before. Those first two years I was really just check chasing. I had no paying sponsors so I knew that if I went a couple of tournaments in a row without a check I’d be in trouble.”
Oddly enough, he felt more prepared prior to 2008 than he had in the previous seasons, even if the results don’t show it.
Tough
Decisions
“This past season I did all my homework and I had a lot of confidence going into it,” he said. “I told my wife and my buddies at home that I was going to try to win one. But when you do that, sometimes you put yourself in a compromised position. There were several tournaments where I let go of the opportunity of making a check in order to win.”
The first example that came to his mind was Wheeler. Like much of the field, he spent a substantial portion of his practice time on the famous Decatur Flats, where he was fairly certain he could earn a check by fishing a big worm, a crankbait and a lipless crank for the duration of the tournament. But he also spent some time “as far up the river as (he) could go,” and enticed three bites in three hours, all of them between four and five and a half pounds. He figured that a limit or two of those fish might put him in position to take home the big prize, so he gambled on them, spent almost the entirety of the first day pursuing them, and came up empty. In the last hour of the day he ran down lake and put together a limit of swimmers, but he couldn’t make up the deficit as the tournament went on and ended up a disappointing 75th.
“I’m still kind of battling (those types of decisions),” he stated. “To win, you have to be doing something that not everybody else is doing. “
He thought he might stumble onto something like that at Lake Murray when he ventured up the river on the first day of practice. He’d never been on the lake before and tried to keep an open mind, but after catching 30 or 40 fish on a frog and a buzzbait, all in the one to two pound range, he “eliminated that whole part of the lake.” While he went on to earn a check via a 31st place finish, the water that he abandoned produced a victory for Fred Roumbanis.
“Over half the spots on the TV show (of Murray) were on my GPS,” Lintner recalled. “I caught enough fish there, just not the big ones.”
Lost
Fish
Falcon was another heartbreaker when his attempt to break away from the pack resulted in only a 47th place finish.
“I don’t know if I could have won it, but I should have been in the top three,” he said. “I was doing something that no one else was doing, throwing an open water frog as far back into the bushes as I could. The bass were rounding up the tilapia back there, just smoking them, all of them were six to ten pounders. “
“My non-boater the last day commented that I lost a forty pound limit in the first two hours. I couldn’t get the boat back to them. I had a ten pounder swimming in a bush and I had to cut the line and let him swim off. Nobody else was around me.”
Falcon was a pivotal point in the season as evidenced by his own words and his late season results. He started off the season with consecutive 33rd, 27th, 47th, 57th, 22nd and 31st place finishes (five checks in six tournaments) and ended it with 75th, 97th, 46th, 49th and 62nd place finishes (two checks in five tournaments, both at the tail end of the money line). He even missed the money at Oneida, where he’d finished 20th in 2006 and 6th in the Bassmaster Memorial in 2007.
What caused his late-season struggles?
“That third day at Falcon got in my head and mentally destroyed me,” he said. “Then at Amistad I lost the same 10 pounder twice in the same day. On the next day, just about 20 feet away from there I lost an eight pounder. From then on, every time I got a good one on, I was wondering how I was going to screw it up. The guys out here are too good to think that way. These guys are not going to fold over. They’re going to step on your neck.”
He admitted that by the end of the year he was “freaking out,” and contemplated not returning to the tour in 2009, but the long drive from New York to California allowed him to sort out his true feelings.
Looking
Ahead
“I had my family with me and we took our time coming back,” he said. “We went to the lake where I grew up fishing for walleye, pike and bass and we hung out there for three or four days. Fishing with my son reminded me of why I do this. As competitors, it’s easy to forget what made you start. It’s not all about making money. You have to enjoy it. Toward the end of the year, I was more stressed out than I’ve ever been, but making that trip with them, then fun fishing at home, I’m just fishing to fish again. I went out fishing for red ears the other day with a buddy and his daughter who had never caught anything and that refreshed me. I’m not thinking about the pressures.”
For better or worse, he’ll have an “extra couple of weeks before the Classic” to do his preseason homework this year, but he said he is “not going to be moping. I’m going to be working.”
“I have a burning desire to get out and fish again,” he added. “I’m kind of going stir crazy.”
While he won’t be competing in the 2009 Classic, he fully expects to be back in 2010.
“Without a doubt,” he said when asked if it bothered him to miss the big show. “Everyone’s goal at the beginning of the year is to make the Classic. But to tell you the truth, my goal in my rookie year was to make enough money to get my entry fees back. I wanted to get six checks. I expected to get demolished. Those first two years I was never in a comfort zone and last year I got kind of relaxed.”
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So if the opportunity arises again, we’ll he go for the big paycheck or rest in his comfort zone?
“That’s what you have to do to win,” he responded. “Every season there are some events where you have to do it. My desire to win is stronger than ever before. I got so used to winning, and now for three years I haven’t won anything. I will take some gambles but I’ll have a backup plan. I have to put myself in a position where if I have one bad day it doesn’t ruin the whole tournament.”
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