There’s one famous quote among tournament bass anglers, “When it’s your turn to win, it’s your turn and you can’t mess it up.” So basically, no matter what you do, the bass fishing gods will make sure you don’t mess it up.

I’m not a superstitious angler, but I do believe that there are the powers that be that can make things happen to help you win. Every now and then, things go your way and Lady Luck shines on you like a beam of light from the heavens.

But sometimes it seems like the whole world is against you and it becomes obvious that today just might not be your day. On these days you’re left wondering, “Where is my Lady Luck and why is she not stepping in and saving me from myself?” This is exactly the question I was asking at a recent event on Lake of the Pines.

After a pretty good practice for two straight days and feeling good about a couple of patterns I had put together, things went south quickly on tournament day.

But let’s start with the first cast of the day as I was working a topwater bait when a 3-pound bass came up and exploded on it! As I swung the bass into the boat, I thought, “This is going to be a great day when your first cast produces a solid 3-pound bass! What a great start!”

But many anglers believe it’s a bad omen to catch a bass on your first cast. Again, I’ve never believed in these kinds of superstitions, but it seemed to be real as things went downhill from there.

Despite the bad omen, I was feeling good about my first fish of the day being a 3-pounder in the live well. But I continued to throw the topwater bait with zero results.

I turned to plan “B,” as I reached down and picked up a spinnerbait that I had been catching a ton of fish on the previous two days of practice. They were hitting this spinnerbait so well in practice, I had to put a guard over the hook so I wouldn’t hook any fish that I might need on tournament day.

One thing is for certain: bass fishing is a funny sport. However, the bass gods have a warped sense of humor as they evidently sent out a memo to all bass that day to “not bite the spinnerbait Steve Graf is throwing!”

But that’s OK, I have a plan “C.” I decided to start fishing a small worm in and around boat docks and brush piles. This is how I thought I could win this event, as 90 percent of my bigger bites in practice came off brush piles.

But my day went from bad to worse as I had three fish break off on the hookset. I lost two huge fish (both over five pounds each) when they pulled off beside the boat as I was playing them down so I could land them.

I knew it wasn’t my day when I lost a $400 Daiwa rod and reel combo that got hung up in the net I was using to land a fish. I lost 45 minutes of valuable fishing time trying to drag and snag the combo with a crankbait — with no success.

Then the final straw came around 1:45 that afternoon, as I bent over to pick up a certain rod and almost blacked out due to how hot it was. This has never happened to me before and I had been so conscious of making sure I was hydrating properly.

This was a wakeup call for me personally, as at the age of 64, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t handle the heat like I used to. Even though I wear good quality sun protective clothing and sunscreen, it’s the heat that you just can’t escape when you’re on the lake trying to win a tournament.

If you think you would like to be a tournament bass fisherman, understand that there will be days that will frustrate you and make you question every idea you had on how to catch a bass. But it could be worse; you could have decided to pursue golf rather than tournament fishing!