Dean Rojas: Consistently Good and Bad

Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012 by Dean Rojas

The Elite Series season is going ok for me, but I’d have to say that even though I’ve had two top 12s, the fact that I’ve had two finishes in the 60s means it hasn't been what I’d call a good season. I guess you could say I’m consistently good and bad. I’m looking forward to being more consistent in the last half of the season.

A lot of people have asked me about my wrist. The good news there is that everything is fixed. I saw a specialist and he put it in a brace. You never want to get hurt, but at least I got hurt at the end of the season, and I guess that’s the best time for something like that to happen.

It happened at the Fish and Chips tournament … actually after the tournament was over. I was bringing what turned out to be the winning fish off the boat deck. When I pulled the bag off the back deck, my hand and wrist tweaked in a bad way. At first it didn’t hurt that much. I kept trying to pop it back out, but it just got worse. I remember at the ceremony when I was holding the trophy, it was all I could do to keep it up in the air.

I had pulled three ligaments in my hand and wrist. I couldn’t even pick up a pot of coffee without it hurting. It was my right hand, which is my casting and flipping hand, so it wasn’t good. It took about a month and a half to get it right again. But I’ve been real careful since then not to over-extend it, so it’s better now.

The bad thing was that the Major League Fishing event came right after Fish and Chips. So when I fished at Amistad, I could still pitch and flip with my left, I just couldn’t cast. The half-hour breaks we had helped a lot. I guess that was like what a basketball or football player goes through. You take a break and things get a little better for a while. But it was really painful.

I was real tickled the first couple of periods, because I was actually leading for a while. But it’s hard to beat these guys with two good arms, much less one. So in the end, they took over.

I’m looking forward to another crack at it, though. So I can’t wait for these next two events.