Ping pong for more bass?

Hand-eye coordination is key to improving

I got a ping-pong table a couple of weeks ago. I’ll challenge anybody — I’ve even smoked my mother-in-law a time or two already. Anyway, I love to play ping-pong almost as much as I love to fish. My brother and I had a table as kids, and while my brother is still too scared to show up here, I’ve been challenging everybody I see.

Several relevant comparisons can be made between fishing and ping pong; bear with me. Hand-eye coordination, timing, anticipation and decision-making are all crucial to a good day on the water.

First, hand-eye coordination. You want to get better at virtually any sport, work on your hand-eye coordination. Training those tiny muscles to fire when you tell them to will help your casting tremendously. It’ll help you skip that jig under that dock better or let you quickly decide to make a backhanded cast at a target before it is too late. Literally milliseconds determine whether you make a good cast or not, so training your muscles to work fast is a key. It will help you do everything faster. You should have seen how fast I threw those potato chips in my grocery cart the other day — like lightning.  Ping pong will help you react to everything faster; I even move around faster after just a couple of weeks with this new table.

Second, timing and anticipation is also something ping pong will help you with. What’s more important than being in the right place at the right time when fishing — or anything, for that matter?  Knowing when the dam is going to release water or knowing when that line of showers is due to arrive — all of these things make a huge difference.  If you know that it is going to be cloudy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon, it may be best to fish the clear water first, then run up a dirty creek in the afternoon. To scale it down to the ultra-fast ping pong version — are you ready for when that stray cloud passes by to pick up that moving bait for 5 seconds or did you not bother and keep flipping?

Last, making a split decision while fishing is critical — no second guessing. In ping pong, you might have a hundredth of a second to decide; in fishing, you can second-guess yourself for hours. Ping pong, and all sports, for that matter, will help you make faster decisions. Right or wrong, with time and practice, you will sense which decisions are right and which are wrong, so you can more quickly and accurately change coarse once again.

I’m the world’s worst at second-guessing my decisions, but one thing I do different that I think helps me on the water is that I try a lot of different lures and techniques in a short period of time when I first start fishing a new body of water or one that I have not been to in a while. I drive the editor of our fishing show “Know Fishing” crazy because I change so much. Take a deep breath Brett, it’ll be okay. In case you want to challenge me in ping pong, I do the same thing; I try a lot of different shots quickly to see where you are weak.

Another sport that is great for your fishing is racketball — just ask bass pro David Dudley, who plays every chance he gets to stay in shape and have fun. It’s the same deal with racketball and hand-eye coordination, but it is much more of a total body workout. I played in college, and it was great fun, but sort of bad on your joints — so be careful with that.

Timing is everything in all sports; a little too soon or a little too late and you lose. Fishing is no different; from timing your hookset to when you take your thumb off the spool to make a cast, timing is everything. Multiply that by the thousands of casts made in a day’s time and your timing better not get off or you’ll have a tough day.  To me ping pong — table tennis for you purists out there — is one of the best sports to help with fishing.

Whatever your choice of sports, play more to help your fishing.