It’s the final countdown

New Year's celebrations have come and gone, and now it's time for Skeet Reese to focus on another year of professional fishing.

It seems like time keeps speeding up as we get closer to the 2015 GEICO Bassmaster Classic. I’ve spent some time preparing for the season, and some good time with Kim and the girls, but the season is definitely just around the corner.

Last time I wrote, we were heading into the New Year, and for the first time in about 10 years we were at home for the turn of the calendar. Usually we are on some sort of a family trip, but this year we decided to stay at home with family and friends.

We were set to go to a party that was supposed to be a small gathering, but it ended up growing. By the time the party started, we had about 75 adults and children ring in the New Year together. The girls ended up not going to bed until around 2 a.m., which made them really struggle to get out of bed the next day. But it was a lot of fun, and they certainly enjoyed it.

I’ve been spending as much time as I can getting ready for the season. For me, that doesn’t mean a New Year’s resolution, it just means focusing on getting into good shape to be able to sustain the hard work through the year. I’ve found that I need to work at it and get into good shape to be able to focus on the water and catch fish consistently.

One of the things I’ve done to kind of “cross train” and spend time with the girls is take up snowboarding. They received snowboards and gear for Christmas, so as a family, we went snowboarding a couple of times. I ended up taking lessons, and by the second trip, I was up on the hill riding with them. It went better than I had anticipated. I didn’t fall as much as some, but I did fall. 

I wore wrist guards because I’ve heard that the most common injuries in snowboarding are wrist related. I figure I could fish with a broken leg if I had to, but not a wrist, so I took precautions. I will say that I was really sore. You use muscles that you didn’t know you hadn’t used while on the hill.

I also got my new Ranger Z521c / Mercury tour boat rigged and wrapped. The guys at C&C Marine in Citrus Heights helped me set it up with my four Lowrance HDS 12 Touch units and all of the final prepping. Corey Fenske at Sticky Graphics did the wrap again, and the Eagle Claw TroKar/ Berkley Havoc wrap looks as good as it did last year.

I broke it in on Bullards Bar Reservoir – the home of the giant spotted bass. I put some time on the 250 ProXS and even bounced a few nice spotted bass on the carpet to break in the fishing part. I didn’t catch any giants like I did last year, but I did catch a few 3 to 4 pound spots swimming my 5-inch Berkley Havoc Sick Fish over suspended fish; that’s always fun.

After that I did a photo and video shoot around here for Dick’s Sporting Goods in preparation for their new campaign this year. We went to Folsom Lake, Lake Clementine and the Delta during the shoot. Michael Mauro, the photographer, took something like 6,000 or 7,000 photos over the three days, not counting videos. He’s going to have a lot of editing to do. I wish I had spent some more time fishing on the Delta, but it’s too hard to do that around a work photo shoot.

Other than that, I’m finishing up the organizing of my lures and boxes and packing up the Big Rig to go because it’s getting closer to time to leave for the Bassmaster Classic and the year ahead. It will be here before you know it, and remember it’s all about the fishing.

What have you caught lately?

Come to my Facebook page and Twitter to follow me through the year.