One of my favorite offseason activities is hunting, and I’ll be spending a lot of the coming weeks in a tree stand. I hunt a lot around my home in central Alabama, but I’ll also make a few trips to Illinois.
Those trips are the highlights of my hunting season, because Illinois is one of the well-known big buck states. It’s easier to get the tag; it’s not a draw state. You can purchase a tag over the counter.
The rut happens earlier up there, so you can hunt the rut in Illinois and by the time it starts to dwindle down, the rut’s here in Alabama. So, you get the best of both worlds, and you have the opportunity to get a really nice one up there.
Along with my hunting, I’ll also spend a good amount of time fishing in the offseason. I like to keep myself in a rhythm and keep my equipment tuned. I kinda slack off during the time when I’m transitioning from one Blazer 625 Pro Tour boat to another, but as soon as I get my new boat, it’s back to fishing.
At that point, I’m getting my equipment sorted correctly, and I’m making sure everything is functioning properly. By the beginning of the year, I have all the kinks worked out, and I’m adjusted to the new rig. I run the same boat every year. Side-by-side, they look exactly the same, but they’re all just a little bit different. Spending time to get everything dialed in helps prepare me to fish at my peak ability in the new season.
Most of my offseason fishing is done locally on the Coosa River, but I will be pre-practicing for some of the 2027 Elite events. I have not done much pre-practice in the past and that has hindered me. Everybody is so good now, and it takes more than three days of practice to learn a place.
I’m not going to pre-practice for every event, but I’ll be taking a trip to some of the venues I’m not familiar with. The main goal will be learning the water, because a lot of times, the biggest battle is navigation. With a lot of the fisheries we visit, it often takes me a day of practice to learn how to navigate, so that leaves me with two days to figure out how to fish it.
I’ll be pre-practicing on Lake Seminole for sure. I’ve fished there once before, but with all the timber, you really have to know how to run around on that lake. Also, I had my best finish (fifth place) at the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway this year, but I need to learn that one a little better.
With all of my pre-practice trips, I’ll make a weekend run where I leave on a Friday, fish Saturday and part of Sunday, then drive back home. The top priority will be familiarization, so I’ll mostly focus on learning how to navigate safely.
Back home, I’ll use my offseason fishing to make sure my fundamentals are sound. When you go from holding a rod five days a week to holding a rod one day a week, you get rusty, so I want to stay in the swing of things.
I want to make sure I’m casting well, I’m making good decisions and I’m in tune with the fish. It’s a process, but the time is well spent, because when you have the opportunities during a tournament, you have to make the right casts.
