The Inside Line

Whenever our tour visits the St. Lawrence River, I know my chances for success are strong. I’ve been fishing there for decades, and in that time I’ve experienced all types of conditions. I was looking forward to this event more than any other on the schedule.

Located near the town of Russellville, Arkansas is Lake Dardanelle — a large pool on the Arkansas River. It covers roughly 40,000 surface acres, and it’s full of prime bass-breeding habitat.

I love this lake because the fish stay shallow most of the year … and they usually bite!

The Tour’s sixth stop was The Mississippi River (pools 7, 8 and 9) out of La Crosse, WI. The Mississippi is well known for its plentiful cover such as wood, wing dams, vegetation, backwater pools and docks. Our first day of practice found Jimmy and me with no bites, so we decided to make a run. We quickly found ourselves on a sand bar, stuck high and dry. Luckily, fellow Yamamoto pro Darrel Robertson happened by and pulled us out. (Thanks, Darrel!)

After the bass spawn, some stay shallow and some head to deeper water immediately.  Knowing whether you should fish shallow or deep is the big debate for me and I have learned that it usually boils down to water clarity and shallow cover.

Ross Barnett Reservoir covers approximately 33,000 surface acres. That’s considerably smaller in comparison to the other fisheries our tour visits.

Having competed there years ago, I knew it would be difficult to find fishable waters to myself.

Our fourth stop on this year’s FLW Tour was Lake Cumberland in Burnside, KY. Cumberland is a huge, clear water reservoir and the main lake is over a 100 miles long. 

There are multitudes of creeks with bushes and standing trees as well as main lake areas with big rock and standing trees. It’s pretty easy on the eyes, too. The lake is very vertical with few flat areas.  All three species of bass can be found here but there are minimums to take into account: an 18" minimum for smallmouth, 15" for largemouth and 12" for spotted bass. The fish were fat and in pre-spawn but with the smallmouth requiring an 18" minimum length, you sometimes ended up toss back a fish that weighs 3 pounds or more. Ouch!

When I first saw Toledo Bend on the schedule, I have to admit, I wasn’t too excited. Even though it’s been voted the best bass lake in America the past two years running, I somehow find a way to miss out on all the action.

The 2017 Bassmaster Elite Series schedule is diverse and full of great fisheries across the country. In this piece I'm previewing the second half of the events of the 2017 season and making my predictions for the patterns and weight needed to win.

Ever since the boating arm of the Johnny Morris empire purchased Legend last week, I’ve been besieged by emails and phone messages inquiring whether his position in the bass boat industry violates any sort of antitrust laws. I have repeatedly had to answer that I really don’t know because in three years of law school and nearly 22 years of practice I’ve never studied antitrust law nor dealt with a matter in which it was a factor.

I have dozens of buzzbaits, and if I were to take the time to count my stockpile it might turn out that my inventory has hit triple digits. But unlike the Senko, where I rely exclusively on a single brand, when it comes to buzzbaits there are numerous manufacturers represented in my existing arsenal.

Rick Morris used a variety of lures to win last week’s Bassmaster Northern Open on Virginia’s James River, just two hours southeast of Pete Weighs In International Headquarters.

You can’t swing a dead cat around the TV dial these days without landing on a show with a “best of” or “Survivor” theme. We’ve seen not only “American Idol,” “America’s Next Top Model” and “America’s Got Talent,” but also “The Biggest Loser,” “Chopped” and of course “Flavor of Love.”

I’ve blogged in this space since February of 2008, a total of nearly 9 ½ years. I’ve endeavored to provide at least two entries a week, and while I’ve failed to accomplish that on a handful of occasions, those failures are more than offset by the times that I’ve published three, four or even five pieces in a seven day span. That means that I’ve found inspiration on at least a thousand occasions to write something, and I’m sure that I have at least a thousand left in me.

When I was 9 years old and my parents bought me my first subscription to Field & Stream, I was wowed by the idea that someone could get paid to write about fishing. At that time, unlike some of you, I had no clue that there was such a thing as a pro bass angler, so writers filled that aspirational target. I mean, come on, with a name like “Ted Trueblood,” more Hemingwayesque than that bestowed on old Ernest himself, how could the F&S scribes not inspire me to chase a life chronicling the outdoors?

The first thing I do after getting a new boat is to take the butt seat out and store it in my garage until it’s time to send the whole deal to the next owner a few years later. I guess I might be inclined to pull it out if fishing in open water or a rough day, but now that I no longer fish tournaments those days are few and far between -- which means that at best a butt seat on the front deck would get in my way and at worst it might knock me into the drink.

I had just about given up hope on buzzbaits. They’d been my bread and butter in the late 90s and for a few years thereafter. Back then I probably threw them a little bit more than I should have, but the results were encouraging enough that I didn’t mind the occasional dry spell. About seven or eight years ago, though, the dry spells started getting longer and longer and longer.