Palaniuk's Sights Already Set On AOY No. 3

By Jonathan LePera
Special to BassFan

Brandon Palaniuk might be a savant ahead of his time.

Driven by competition, solving the puzzles of fish behavior and learning to adapt intuitively, Palaniuk clinched his second Bassmaster Angler of the Year title this past weekend and is already set on winning a third. He's humble enough to try to make those around him feel welcome with an autograph, handshake or a helping hand, but with an unquenchable competitive resolve deeply engrained within to become one of the best.

Palaniuk is a sponsor's dream, seamlessly promoting their brands. He respects his peers, fishes clean and avoids conflict, and waits to congratulate every winner on the Elite trail.

Bassmaster Live! host Mark Zona remembers Palaniuk’s first Elite Series victories on Bull Shoals and Lake Ontario and how he initially became known as a young gun with a proficiency for electronics. His timing was impeccable.

“Brandon came along as electronics were improving and the young anglers were on the cusp of dominating with electronics," Zona said.

Today, the conversation has changed.

“Professional fishermen talk smack non-stop and nobody says a bad word about Brandon Palaniuk. Every angler holds that dude at the highest level. Then to now, he is THE package.”

What impressed Zona most was Palaniuk's strategy formulation for tournaments.

“He has a very Aaron Martens way about his pre-study to how he practices. He looks for fish out of the way, oddball stuff, from what's being looked for by the core competitor that he’s against. It’s one of the reasons he wins tournaments."

Enjoy The Grind

After escaping the season-opening events in Florida in decent shape, Palaniuk hoped to be in contention for the AOY title. Once he got to fish all four days of the Pickwick Lake tournament, he started to sense that perhaps “something was happening outside of my control.” His daughter, Kora, arrived a week after she was due, allowing him to gain necessary points.

On his BMPFishing.com website, he sells a sticker with the slogan, “Control the Controllables". That said, the pressure of Brandon Lester chasing down the AOY title was not lost on Palaniuk.

“I can’t believe it’s over. With the weight of the last two weeks, I felt like Brandon Lester was a sasquatch on my shoulders. That is kudos to him for how good of an angler he is. He put pressure on me. I hated it for the last two weeks, and I loved it at the same time because it made me feel alive.”

Palaniuk’s mental game is constantly evolving. He eats clean, is dedicated to physical exercise and reads books which specific narratives that help refine his mindset and business theory. It can be a grind, but he relishes tournament fishing.

“KVD is the winningest angler ever in bass fishing history and he's only won 28 times. He has lost tenfold of what he’s won. When you look at it that way, he’s the guy who has won more than anybody. Be it sponsorships or trophies, it’s a constant battle of losses, so there has to be something in you that will squash and battle through those,” Palaniuk said.

“The valleys are much longer when you get to the top. It is a pretty sweet sight. It’s those moments that make those feelings when you reach that success,” he said. “Some of the tourneys I am most proud of are not necessarily the ones I've won, but where I've turned nothing into a Top 5. Those are personal wins.”

At age 35, Palaniuk is a seasoned veteran. The two-time high school state wrestling champion did not stumble upon his competitive nature by accident; it fuels his fire. He trusts his experience and intuition from 12 years of fishing the Elite Series.

“You start to understand what it takes, what you are capable of and where you can push yourself. Mentally, how much can you push your focus to flip that switch and put all your eggs in that basket. I break it down one fish at a time, one day at a time, one tournament at a time.

“I need that first bite, and I get a 4-pounder; I need four of those. You break it down to these bite-size chunks so that it isn’t this daunting task.”

Palaniuk is an angler who always has the pedal stuck to the floor and relishes the pressure. But he’d been there before; mentally, he’d been in the trenches and knew the season's final event on the upper Mississippi River out of La Crosse, Wis. would take one fish at a time. He had to trust his intuition.

“Relentless – the one thing about Palaniuk is that the dude just keeps coming," Zona said. "There are a lot of anglers that tend to live and build off their practice. He is one of the few that I've covered, and you hear the cliché` 'fishing the moment,' and it's so hard to do that; who can transition and start over during a tournament,” Zona said. “When the bite is leaving, he can adapt and find a new bite during an event. Only the best I covered and have fished with owned the trait. It’s very easy for anglers to say they're going to do that, but they don’t.”

Zona pointed to Palaniuk’s 2021 win at Santee Cooper Lakes, a tournament that was not supposed to fit Palaniuk’s stereotypical wheelhouse of deep water and electronics.

“When you start the tournament with a jerkbait, then for two hours you punch a mat, and the next day you catch an 8-pounder on a dropshot, you are in a different realm. You are doing things on bodies of water you are not supposed to and destroying everybody doing it."

Such wisdom rang true on Day 2 of the Mississippi River event. His first day wasn’t stellar, but he hoped for a better second day. However, he didn’t fill his limit until late in the day.

“Day 2 of at Lacrosse was one of the most impressive days I have ever seen with someone who did not let the wheels come off,” Zona said. “That day would have broken 95 percent of the competitors in that field. He had no fish by 11 a.m., and for him to piecemeal an 11 1/2-pound limit that day, you put an asterisk by that day as when he won Angler of the Year this season.”

Palaniuk said he got a little shaky, but found optimism that he was getting plenty of bites despite not hooking them. He felt he was being tested; a little trigger-happy on some bites, a little slower on others, or maybe they weren’t ready to eat.

“I kept a level of confidence knowing I was around the right quality of fish; if I could just put them in the boat, I would have a shot," Palaniuk said. “Without that, I most likely don’t win AOY. That is why you fish until the very end. I always say I have won more tournaments on my last cast than my first, and I’m usually one of the last anglers to check in."

Such versatility was evident during Day 3 at La Crosse. He woke up stress-free, feeling like he was going to smash the fish. Once he had 13 pounds within the first hour, sensing the AOY title was within his grasp, he opted to expand his game plan instead of playing it safe.

“I started running different stuff, some new water; the biggest thing for me was I got in a flow early so I could make different decisions," he said. "It all started to click. This is what’s going on. Here is where the bigger bites are. I didn’t have a problem leaving what I’d found a couple of days before; I just ran with it.

“Fishing is fun! That’s what I try to remind myself.”

Team Effort

What’s most incredulous is that Palaniuk seems to have found his groove at the busiest time of his life. With the arrival of his daughter, it’s natural that his attention is drawn to her. Sleep deprivation becomes part of the game, but he welcomes every second.

Palaniuk stresses how integral his wife Tiffanie is to their team, allowing him to focus on fishing.

“It’s not often that you hear me say I did something. It’s WE did something. I don’t compete at the level I do or the consistency without the people on my team, and Tiff is at the top of the list. She takes care of the day-to-day and has parts of the business that she runs, a lot of the logistical stuff, and there are parts I do, like sponsorship, Palaniuk said.

He is also immensely grateful for his family and friends at home, his sponsors who believe in him representing their brands and the service crews who work tirelessly to keep him on the water.

The Right Ingredients

Post-pandemic, the industry is experiencing an incredible demand for sponsorships. With the rapid growth of the high school and college programs, Zona cringes at the typical first question, “How do I get sponsors?” He always gives the same answer.

“I want you to stare at and watch Brandon Palaniuk's work and how you hold yourself on and off the water; he sits on a tier all alone. He is a professional angler.”

For those who've studied Palaniuk’s business plan, he’s a man of unwavering core values, ethics and principles driven by an incredible acumen for business. His massive social media following is by design, not accident.

One of his shirts for sale at BMPFishing.com sports the slogan, “People Over Profit.”

“I made that shirt based on stuff I’d gone through with sponsorships, which has shaped my business," Palaniuk said. "I want to work with people I can grow with and enjoy. I want them to be friendships; I don’t want them to be transactional and feel like a number on a profit/loss sheet.”

Gaining confidence in a company's products is a prerequisite for any sponsorship conversation for Palaniuk. He pointed to one of his sponsors, X Zone Lures, a family-run company in a small town in Ontario, Canada, as being easy to work with.

“I wanted to fish for a living because I enjoyed fishing, and if you don’t enjoy the people you work with, you aren’t going to enjoy your job. My job isn’t just fishing; I also have to pay the bills with sponsorship money. I want to enjoy the people I work with."