Welcome to the Potomac

We have arrived here at the Potomac, Elite Tourney No. 8, and in some cosmic shift of nature, the country B.A.S.S. dudes have gone to the city, and the city dude, me, has gone to the country.

Captions by Don Barone

Before Tournament Director guru Trip Weldon left, he called me over and said exactly this, âYou know how many times Iâve been here, you see this tree Iâm leaning againstâ¦â

ââ¦when I first came here it was just a small sapling, in fact it stood between the bumping table and the tanks, thatâs how small it was and thatâs how long Iâve been coming here.â I mumbled something about it being a Dorian Gray tree, he said, âNope, oak.â

It was a pretty calm day here at the Thursday/Friday launch site, Smallwood State Park in Marbury, Md. I wonât try that water skiing stuff since I pretty much donâtâ¦

â¦even like skiing with a boat underneath me as I think most of these bass boats are basically water skis with seats.

This dock will lead some of the Elites to the 2017 Bassmaster Classicâ¦

â¦with only two Elite regular season events left, itâs crunch time out there on the water.

As a city dude Iâm digging this slice of country only an hour or so south of Washington, D.C.â¦

â¦the peace and the quiet, theâ¦

â¦peanut butter, yeah as Iâm standing on the dock digging the country solitude Freddy âBoom Boomâ Roumbanis motors up and offers to share his peanut butter and jelly lunch with meâ¦

â¦I pass on the lunch gig and after a couple of minutes of talking and chewing Freddy tells me he is going to head to his secret spot which is…

No Fishing from the dock unless you happen to beâ¦

…these guys.

I stood and just watched, watched the birds one by one take off from the dock, fly so close to me that I could hear their wings flapping, watch them circle upwards, higher and higher, circle and circle, then suddenlyâ¦

â¦.drop out of the sky like a rock straight down and then within inches of the water, level off for a couple feet and then, drop, legs shoot out, slow for a second, then bank to the right, to the left, then straight up into the tree tops. If you look close that splash in front of the bird is the tail of a fish trying to dive deeper. It wasnât deep enough.

The country folks to the city, the city dude to the countryâ¦

â¦I know who builds cities, I search though for who buildsâ¦

â¦this, orâ¦

â¦that.

True story, as I watched this butterfly, I silently asked, thought to myself, âshow me, show me you did this, show me you created all of this,â and then chuckled for even thinking that, even wondering, even askingâ¦

…and then as I turned away to take another shot, focus on another flower or something, I felt a tiny brush across my left hand that held and focused my camera lens and when I took looked up from the eyepiece I found the butterfly sitting on my finger looking at me. I donât know what it meant but I took it and gently placed it on the ground and stood next to it as it drank water from a puddle, then watched as it took flight, once around me and then disappeared into the forest. This city guy has never touched a butterfly before, but then again, I had never asked.