DAVID WALKER: Ready for redemption in 2025

Mercury pro has a new mindset entering the 2025 Bass Pro Tour season

One of my two daughters, Lilly, recently wrapped up her college volleyball career. She started seriously playing around fifth grade, spent years on travel teams and ultimately earned a scholarship, of which I’m very proud. Through all those years, whenever she’d be working on her serve or slogging through a tough workout, we developed a saying: “Last one, best one.”

Come on. One more. You can do it. Last one, best one.

I don’t know for sure whether the upcoming season will be my last on the Bass Pro Tour, but I’m adopting that mindset for 2025.

The BPT roster is set to undergo a second round of cuts this year. Last year, we trimmed from 80 anglers to 66. I was the last angler to requalify based on career average. After the 2025 season, we’ll be down to 50 anglers for 2026 and beyond.

With the roster cuts looming, the 2024 season was one of the most challenging of my career. And while I know this year will bring some of the same stresses, I’m committed to not worrying about the unknowns, fishing to the best of my ability and letting the chips fall where they may.

A different kind of pressure

Pretty much my whole adult life, whenever someone has asked me what I’d do if I couldn’t fish for a living, I haven’t had an answer. Ever since I took the leap more than 30 years ago, quitting my job working a punch press for $8.50 an hour to chase the tournament dream, this has been my Plan A and Plan B.

So, after we found out about the roster cuts and it became apparent that my career at the top level of tournament bass fishing might come to an end sooner than I’d planned, I started thinking a lot about what might be next. I never really figured it out.

Adding to the pressure was the fact that not only is fishing professionally the only career I’ve ever known, it’s all my family has known, too. I’ve been married 25 years — that whole time, I’ve been a professional angler. When my family gets together, my wife and two daughters are always reminiscing about this road trip or that memory in conjunction with one of my tournaments. This has been our life — how do you replace that?

Looking back, I think I spent too much time fixating on those unknowns. As a tournament veteran, I’m no stranger to pressure. There’s always a championship berth or an Angler of the Year title or a chance to win or a check you could really use on the line. But last season — feeling like I needed to perform to keep my career afloat and avoid having to find a new way to make a living — was a different type of pressure than anything I’d ever experienced before.

That wore on me as the season progressed, and I think it played a part in my poor end to the year. I actually started strong; after Stage Four on Lake Eufaula, I sat 32nd in the points and had cashed checks at three of the first four events. I was especially excited because, coming into the year, I thought the last three events, all on river systems, fit my style of fishing even better than the early ones. Unfortunately, the fish had other ideas, and I fell to 61st in the standings. I had to wait a few weeks after the season ended at the St. Lawrence River to see whether my career average would be good enough to get an invite back in 2025. Thankfully, it was.

Hungry for redemption

I know we just talked about how I didn’t do a great job of handling the pressure of last year. That same pressure is going to be back in 2025. But entering this season, I’m feeling optimistic.

For one thing, I learned a lot from last year. One of the most valuable lessons was not getting caught up in the what-ifs that could come at the end of the season but instead focusing on one day at a time. It sounds cliché, but at this point I truly believe it’s how I perform my best.

I’m also bullish about the schedule — I have experience on every fishery — and the new forward-facing sonar rules. Without delving too deep into the debate around technology’s place in the sport, I believe that, for me personally, having the freedom to look for the type of patterns I spent my whole career refining rather than feeling like I have to find a forward-facing bite to have any chance of competing should be beneficial.

Most important, I’m hungry for redemption, and this season gives me a shot at it. One of the toughest things about last year was feeling like I hadn’t put my best foot forward down the stretch and not knowing if I would get another chance to be better. I don’t care what you do, no one wants to go out like that, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to show that I still know how to catch ’em.

So, regardless of whether or not this season is my last one, I’m going to make it my best.