Clunn contemplates his Force
Part two: the master bestows wisdom
(Editor’s note: click here to see the first part of this story.)
Rick Clunn could be considered the Jedi Master of bass fishing. In the same way Obi Wan Kenobi taught Luke Skywalker the ways of the Force, Clunn looks to teach other anglers the intangible fishing skills he has successfully applied as a tournament angler.
This fall Clunn will start his Outdoor Awareness and Advanced Angling School. The school will be limited to 30 students and will be taught by Clunn and instructors who have taught at Tom Brown’s Wilderness Survival School in New Jersey.
FLW Outdoors: This fall, you and your wife, Melissa, are hosting a fishing school at your home in Missouri. Can you talk about that?
Clunn: The school teaches you to be a complete angler. It teaches in a “Karate Kid” fashion. The instructors teach outdoor awareness skills and techniques. At first, students may wonder what these exercises have to do with fishing. I act as an interpreter, telling students how mastering these skills will make them a complete angler.
Some of the specifics include reawaking and enhancing sensory abilities, becoming in tune with natural rhythms, realizing the difference between the intellectual self and the intuitive self, inner vision skills, stalking animals, learning the rings of awareness, learning about camouflage and blind spots in nature. And like I said, some may ask, “What has all that got to do with bass fishing?” – which is where I come in. I will help anglers understand how to apply these skills to their fishing.
FLW Outdoors: For 20 years you have given advice to young anglers to spend as much time on the water as possible and to be focused. You have shared your winning secrets in magazines and on television. Now you are going to be giving anglers some of your most potent secrets.
As a result, you have inspired a generation of young and extremely talented anglers. They master winning techniques in a matter of years, instead of decades, and are a threat to win any event on the national tours. To what extent do you think you have become a victim of your own inspiration and education now that these young anglers are competing for the same fish you are?
Clunn: Nearly any hierarchy in any culture throughout history is essentially based on those who had information and those who did not. So there has always been a tendency to protect knowledge. But I don’t think that is the way it is supposed to be.
When I look back over my career, the times that I have grown the most is when I have taught the most. When I have quit teaching, I have quit growing. Over the last 10 years, I have really cut back on seminars, and I have not been teaching as much.
For me, teaching is a tremendous learning tool. In order to teach, you have to be able to take a lot of raw data and constitute it into a teachable format for students. That process – organizing raw data in a teachable format – is good for me because it forces me to take knowledge that I have at a subconscious level and bring it to a conscious level. Going through the teaching process forces me to do that.
Another motivation for teaching is that I eventually want to coach young anglers individually. Just like Tiger Woods has a swing coach, I want to be a fishing coach for anglers. My school will be a vehicle to identify those potential anglers.
Since I will be both a teacher and a competitor, I can’t allow my students to pass me. So, that helps me push myself and keeps me learning at an advanced level. No matter how much information I give them, there is no way they can catch up to me unless I quit learning.
That is what happened on the BASS circuit this season. My performance was not a function of the younger anglers catching up to me; it was a function of me sliding back to them. In some ways I quit learning and it showed. It was not their fault; it was mine.
Finally, in teaching younger anglers, I get their youthful enthusiasm and inspiration. They have a childlike freshness – everyday on the water is fascinating, and that rejuvenates me. That is the hardest part for older anglers: to retain that youthful energy and childlike mind.
So, I might be giving away valuable information – trade secrets you might say – but in return I am forcing myself to put fishing into a coachable format, pushing myself to learn more at an advanced level, and being rejuvenated by fresh minds that see the water through eyes of total possibility.
In doing that, if my most powerful competitors are my own students, well there is a certain satisfaction to that.
FLW Outdoors: You sometimes describe fishing as touching perfection. Can you describe or give an example of that?
Clunn: Whether they know it or not, every fisherman has experienced this, if even for a few minutes.
Think about planning that perfect fishing trip. Think for a minute how you imagine that to be. In your mind’s eye you have the perfect campsite on the water. The weather is perfect. The wind is calm; the water is clear. Every cast is perfect. Your lure works just right. Five pounders are biting every cast.
The reality of it is that all the campsites are taken up. It rains the whole time. The lake is muddy. Everybody is on your favorite fishing spot. The wind is howling. You get hung up. Every other cast is a backlash – backlashes and hang-ups were not part of your perfect fishing vision. And suddenly you are cussing and fighting against everything.
But then something clicks – and this may only happen for 10 minutes – but you make a couple perfect casts. The lure works just right. You get that special “feeling” that you are going to catch a fish, and on the next cast you catch one. Then another one. You get hung up, but instead of cursing you go get the bait loose and make a cast that you would have not otherwise made, and that cast produces another fish. You get a backlash, and while you are picking it out, the wind drifts you into another position and you catch another fish. Suddenly everything that you were cussing and fighting helps push you in the right direction. Now your are in the natural flow; you are part of the natural rhythms. That “perfect” fishing trip that you had imagined is taking place, if only briefly.
I call that touching perfection – achieving a harmony between mind, body, soul and the rest of the universe. Call it whatever you want, describe anyway you want, but that magical feeling is the same for all of us. And that is what keeps people coming back fishing – that special feeling.
In my tournament fishing career, I have experienced that perfection for an entire day and it was the last day of 1990 Classic. There is no booze or drug that can come close to competing with that natural high.
FLW Outdoors: Is it possible for you to touch perfection and still not win a tournament?
Clunn: Yes. I fished nearly a perfect tournament in the 1987 BASS Masters Classic and finished second.
Honors and awards must be left out of striving for perfection. Because if you do things for honors and awards and you don’t receive those honors and awards, then you will never fully appreciate your performance.
The problem here is, once you touch perfection on one level – the bar gets raised, and you want to touch perfection on the next level. So touching perfection for me today is much different than touching perfection 10 years ago.
FLW Outdoors: You have been in intense pursuit of perfection for 30 years. Your relentless drive has never wavered. From where does your insatiable appetite for perfection come?
Clunn: Several factors contribute to that. The first is probably my father. In high school my father pushed me in sports in a way that I could feel his desire for me to excel; he wanted me to be the best. And I was really never any good at the traditional sports. I did not have the physical attributes to perform at a high level.
When I discovered fishing, I found something that was limitless. Fishing provided an opportunity to excel and show him that I could be the best at something.
Another aspect is fear. I am afraid of not pushing myself to the absolute of my abilities. If I let up just a little bit this time, next time I’ll let up a little more and eventually become lazy.
Finally, I believe that one of the greatest tragedies in life is unfulfilled potential. The greatest gift we can return to creation for all of the gifts that the creator gives us is to live up to our fullest human potential. I will continue to do that until the day I die.
Author’s note: A big “thanks” to Rick Clunn for the interview and for his inspiration in competitive bass fishing. He has been a pioneer in proving that there is much more to fishing than luck.
Undoubtedly, he still has some superhuman performances left in him.
Perhaps bass-fishing fans will get to see such heroics at Cross Lake in
Louisiana, when Clunn angles for $250,000 in the FLW Championship, September
11-14.
May the Force be with him.
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