Happy New Year!

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy New Year's celebration, and I wish you all the best for this year. I had a wonderful time with family and friends, and now I'm down at Lake Amistad for a three-fold trip.

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy New Year's celebration, and I wish you all the best for this year. I had a wonderful time with family and friends, and now I'm down at Lake Amistad for a three-fold trip.

First, it's time that I get back into fishing regularly. Last week I took a trip to Fayette County Lake and had a ball with Little Alton. We had a fantastic time. When we filmed the "Day on the Lake Live" a few weeks ago, we had a spot that gave us lots of action first thing in the morning. I tried it last week, but I think it's been hammered. You can hardly get a bite there, and you have to take a number to fish it.

We've caught them on Yum Money Minnows on Fish Head Spins. The fish are starting to pull up and stage for the spawn. Almost every point in the lake has some fish on it now. We pulled up to this one spot and caught 80 bass. No joke — 80! Our biggest was close to 7 pounds. When you get around them, your graph blows up with fish. There are hundreds of fish in a school at Fayette versus Amistad, where a school may have 20 or 30. You wouldn't want to fall overboard; they'd probably attack you.

Like I said, Little Alton and I don't get to fish together as much as we used to with him being in college and all. Whenever he's got a bit of a break, we try to take advantage of it. So, the second reason we're here at Amistad is to spend some time together. The last reason is that he's got a Bass Champs tournament here coming up soon.

All in all, we're having a ball. For the past two years, I haven't spent much time on Amistad because I've been addicted to Falcon. With the recent alleged murders on Falcon, I've been at Amistad. It's completely safe. There have been no incidents here, and the Mexican side is just as safe as the American side. It's been nice getting reacquainted with this lake.

As I spend time out here, I remember why I love it so much; it's a fantastic fishery. Right now, we're catching about 40 fish per day. While we haven't caught any giant fish, we've heard stories from other fishermen about double-digit fish. We have caught a few fish in the 6-pound range, though, and lots of good keepers.

What's really fun about Amistad is that in the wintertime it's better than Falcon. You can always catch a bigger sack of fish at Falcon, but in the winter, the bite slows down there, but if you know the water you can find big wads of fish. We've caught 'em as shallow as 2 feet, and as deep as 60 feet on the bottom. The deep bite has been best this week. If you like to look at your electronics and find fish then turn around and catch 'em, there's no better place for that than Amistad and no better time to do it than now.

They're predictably situated on the edges of channels, and when you go over the right spot, your graph will light up. You can catch 'em on a jigging spoon, a football head jig, a drop shot and a Fish Head Spin. There are lots of bait options out there now. You just have to decide how you want to catch the next one.

With the Elites coming up, I plan to do a lot more fishing to get my mindset right for tournaments. I've also started planning some prefishing trips for the Elite tournaments. I'm ready to get back into the game this year and have a great season, and I hope you all follow along as I fish against the 100 best anglers in the world!