One of the things we fishermen grade ourselves on is “fishing clean,” which means you didn’t make a lot of mistakes. Well, one of the biggest mistakes you can make behind the scenes is not keeping your sunglasses and your electronics screens clean.
Periodically wiping off your glasses is more convenient because they’re right there in front of you. If your vision gets blurred, you’re not picking out your targets as efficiently. But throughout the course of a day, your screens can accumulate splotches and stains that impair your ability to see what you need to see from your electronics.
If you’re on a lake where you’re fishing deep, offshore structure, brush or whatever, it’s a must to keep your screens clean, too. If you’re out there, it’s rough, you’re catching fish and they’re slinging water on your screen, you need to wipe it two or three times a day.
Something to consider is that different parts of the country have different types of water. For example, Toledo Bend and Lake Texoma have hard water that leaves those big white spots that are hard to get off your graph, your boat or wherever it touches. The key is to wipe it off immediately so it doesn’t leave that residue.
A lot of guys use all kinds of stuff, but one thing I don’t like to put on my electronics is Windex. I know it’s good for cleaning your windows at home, but if you put it on electronics screens or glasses, it’s so streaky it leaves a bigger mess than if you just wiped it off with a clean rag.
What I’ve found to be the best option for cleaning all of my screens is the spray that comes in the Costa Clarity kit.
If it’s good enough to clean lenses made with Costa’s 580 technology, it’s good enough to clean just about any surface. The microfiber cloth that comes with each pair of glasses is good for wiping down your electronics screens, but if I don’t have that handy any towel with the Costa Clarity will work.
As much as I believe in keeping my screens clean, I really don’t go overboard with this. I mean, you can be super cautious and try to not stand over your screen as much when you’re handling fish, but if you worry about it that much, you’re taking your mental focus off of your fishing.
I look at it this way: If your electronics screen gets dirty while you’re fishing, that means you’re catching something.
Now, the one thing I can spend time managing is the organization in my truck. That’s harder than it sounds because my girlfriend McKenzie travels with me, and she brings 10 times as much stuff as I do.
In fairness, everyone who knows me knows that I’m the most cold-natured person on the Elite Series, so until the air temperature gets above 80, I carry a bunch of extra clothes, hoodies and jackets to keep me warm.
But when it starts getting warm in the South, the Elite schedule starts heading to the North. When you get up around Michigan, Wisconsin and those areas, even though it’s summer, you never know what kind of weather you’re going to have.
I’ve got a system with truck drawers, so I try to keep as much as I can in the bed of the truck and out of the cab. I also use big heavy-duty bins to carry other stuff. I leave off the lids because that keeps the contents neatly organized, but accessible.
When it comes to my boat and truck’s appearance, I’m definitely not a neat freak, but I don’t like my stuff to get nasty either. I you go down a three-week run where you fish tournaments back-to-back, it can be really challenging to keep your boat a truck clean.
Depending on where you go, sometimes you have to travel down dirt roads and that gets your stuff super nasty. In that case, I’ll wash my truck and boat after every trip to knock off all that stuff. But if it’s just clean summertime fishing where we’re not on a grass lake, I probably wouldn’t wash my boat until I got back home.
Trucks and boats are always going to get a little dirty during the course of your traveling and fishing, but getting dusty from going down dirt roads or getting those grimy water lines on your boat — that stuff has to come off.
That’s like letting your grass get waist-high in your yard. It just doesn’t look good.
I think it’s important to keep my boat and truck decent and presentable because I owe it to my sponsors to make sure their logos are clearly visible. Also, if my boat’s nasty, it just does something to my mind.
I fish better when my stuff is clean — and no water spots.