I’ll tell you what, the Mississippi River is full of bass. Almost every angler caught fish all day long up there. Now, I won’t say that they were all big. They weren’t. In fact, a lot of them were small. Nevertheless you could catch one right after the other in a lot of places.
Most of mine came on a Snag Proof Guntersville Frog and a Luck “E” Strike Fast Lane Tube. I managed to get enough of them to the scales to earn a 47th place finish. I would have liked to have done better but I’ll take what I got. I’m still within striking distance of the Classic. It’s on me from now on. There’s no way to complain about that.
It’s kind of funny, no matter if you’re an Elite Series pro or not you never get tired of catching them. Even if they aren’t as big as you’d like, or big enough to win, you still leave the tournament with a positive feeling. Catching bass is what we’re about, I suppose.
We have a tournament break from now until the first part of August. I say tournament break because, for me at least, it’ll be as busy as any other part of the season. One of the first things on my schedule is ICAST out in Las Vegas.
That’s a huge fishing trade show that pretty much displays everything that’s new or that’s going to be available to consumers in the next year. It’s not open to the general public. It’s for manufacturers, dealers and retail stores.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the scoop, because you can. Just check in here at Bassmaster.com a time or two each day and you can read about and see almost everything out there that’s worth your time. Don’t miss it. There will be some interesting things available this year. The dates are July 10, 11 and 12.
When I’m not out there with my sponsors, I’ll be working for most of them in one way or another. Sometimes it’ll be at sport shows and things like that. At other times, I’ll be working on product development and improvement.
That’s one thing you should always keep in mind. As professional anglers, we are often used to test new products and give our sponsors candid advice on how they work and how they can be made better. The best companies value constructive criticism.
Speaking for myself, product development is one of the more fun things about being an Elite Series angler. I have a good time working on this stuff knowing that what we’re doing — the company, myself and the other pro staff members — is helping everyone catch more bass.
Of course, I’ll spend some of this time between tournaments working on the businesses we’re developing and fishing Guntersville. There’s always something to do in the business world, and there’s always a fish biting somewhere on the lake.
Next week we’ll talk a little about how to deal with hot weather bass. It’s not as hard as you might think.