Spanning the globe, to bring you a wide variety of bass …
The life of a journalist chronicling the exploits of bass fishing can be rather demanding. There are 4 a.m. wakeups and extensive travel. Yet there are perks, and not just testing out free tackle for “professional assessment.”
The tournaments take B.A.S.S. workers all across the country, to Canada and Mexico, but some go much farther. James Hall, editor of Bassmaster Magazine, just returned from a 10-day trek up Brazil’s Rio Negro, a famed peacock bass fishery.
Hall went on the invitation of Pure Fishing and Anglers Inn to “test out some new gear and experience the outfitter’s new mothership operation, as well as the grand reopening of the Rio Negro Lodge by Anglers Inn.
“Yes, hard work, but I felt compelled to take one for the team,” he said.
Sounds rough there, Jim.
Hall and others reeled in exotic species on a 350-mile trip up river on the Anglers Inn Santana, a four-story, luxury riverboat that docked at the swanky new lodge.
“This facility seemed way out of place in the middle of the jungle,” Hall said. “It wasn’t the Ritz, but pretty close.
“The real treat was access to the small tributaries where the peacocks thrived. Piranha, freshwater barracuda and a host of other tropical fish eagerly ate our lures between the giant topwater eruptions of the peacocks.”
A number of peacock bass weighing in the high teens were caught, and one member topped 20 pounds. Hall’s biggest (shown above) went 13 pounds.
“But size didn’t really matter to me,” he said. “Surrounded by monkeys, pink dolphins, macaws and caiman up to 15 feet, fishing in the Amazon was an experience of adventure. Slicing our way through narrow cuts, walking over white-sand bars to reach landlocked lagoons, avoiding all things poisonous and toothy, visiting fishing villages built by hand and void of electricity … those are the memories forever etched in my grey matter.”
Hall will write a feature of his exploits, and he took plenty of photos to share on Bassmaster.com soon.
KVD passing torch
Kevin VanDam is one who likes order, and everything was in order for a Kansas hunt with twin sons, Nicholas and Jackson, and his brother-in-law, Russ Campbell.
Steve Bowman was in the KVD camp and gives an inside look in “VanDam’s deer hunt army” and offers “The VanDams’ deer hunt” in photos, including this shot below of Kevin and Jackson with bucks.
Kevin has been taken with deer hunting since he was 12 years old. In his first year hunting, he had high expectations to only shoot a buck, but after several fruitless years he just wanted one, and he gave the Daily Limit a rundown of his first kill.
“I finally said I need to just try to get one underneath my belt,” he said. “It was late season. It was in December, and we had a lot of snow. There was one main big trail where a lot of deer were heading to this corn field to feed in the evening, and I had a stand right there underneath it.”
VanDam said he saw a deer coming down the trail, but he thinks it saw him up in the tree when it was about 60 yards away. Yet it was so focused on getting to the field that he said she just kept coming.
“It was a little nervous, so as it was getting ready to come it started to trot,” he said. “A lot of times they just get excited before they get there and they’ll run the last 100 yards to get in the field.
“So I drew back and this deer was coming, and I didn’t care if it was doe, buck, whatever, I was just gonna get this deer. And it come running down the trail and I was at full draw and I just put the pin kind of right on it and shot it. I ended up shooting it right in the neck.”
VanDam admits it was more of a trot than a full-out run, but he hit a moving target for his first deer, something he would never attempt today.
“At that time, I was just bound and determined I was going to get that deer, and it just dropped instantly right there underneath me,” he said. “So I was really excited to be able to get that first one.”
There’s been many since, and he’s passed that passion to his boys.
Big catch contest
Terri Wright of Florida (above) holds our Big Bass of the Week. She was among the winners of the Catch of the Week presented by Toyota photo contest. Anyone can enter by posting a photo #BigCatchContest, but you might want to hurry — the contest, which doles out prizes, ends Dec. 27. Check out the latest round of winners and their fish.
Lucas talks self-doubts
In his recent column, Justin Lucas advises everyone that tournament fishing is not as easy as it looks on Bassmaster LIVE.
He said the live show during Elite events switches shots from angler to angler, making it look like catches occur all day (the show producers sure don’t think so).
Lucas countered that idea by saying he’s sat in his boat thinking, “Man, I suck. I can’t even get a bite right now.” Read more of his take in “Don’t let the cameras fool you.” And be sure to check out the comments at the bottom.
It was a very good year …
The 10th year of the Bassmaster Elite Series was rather exceptional by all counts.
Attendance grew 32 percent as 170,215 visited Elite events, and unique visitors to Bassmaster.com increased 12 percent and there were more than 200 million pageviews, a record. To top it off, the newest feature, Bassmaster LIVE, generated 380,000 video views totaling 13.5 million minutes.
Word on the street is the LIVE hours will be increased for the Classic, but don’t tell anybody I said anything.
Culling
- Ouch, yech, eww, ugh and heck no goes out to Derek Remitz. Girlfriend Kelli Newman posted photos of an awful incident involving Remitz’s foot and a chainsaw. “When D cuts down trees … he saws through his shoes!” The photo of the wound wasn’t as bad as one might imagine, and we supposed it’s good the montage includes Remitz giving a thumbs up in the hospital. And that he was wearing shoes.
- Edwin Evers must be living right, or he paid off this officer (right) with some pecans. Evers said it was the most sickening feeling in the world to be getting pulled over. He thought he might have been speeding but, “Fortunately for me, my tag had just expired and the guy happened to be a fisherman.” Anyone else have a traffic stop turn into a smiling selfie?
- Steve Wright spent some time with legend Rick Clunn, who plans to make a big change next season. After all these years of not taking any information from outside sources, Clunn said he’ll try to teach himself to get help locating fish. Wright details that in “Is Rick Clunn done?”
- Jarden, which owns Pure Fishing among its consumer product lines, was sold to a larger consumer product marketer, Newell Rubbermaid, for $13 billion. See details here. Also, there are no new reports on Bass Pro Shops’ rumored purchase of Cabela’s.
- Dean Rojas posted the shot below of his Christmas tree adorned with Kermit and all his buddies. Sure, bass anglers could just reach into their tackles boxes for some pretty nice tree ornaments, but you think their wives would allow that? Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone.
