The Inside Line

When B.A.S.S. first released the 2018 Bassmaster Elite Series schedule, I saw plenty of opportunity. Most of the venues seemed perfectly suited to my style of fishing, and I was anxious to get things rolling.

Unfortunately, with each passing event that optimism faded. In the end, I was left with the worst season of my 30-plus-year career.

Every summer the Bassmaster Elite Series heads north, and that means big waves and big smallmouth. It is a fun way to fish but it also takes additional preparation to make sure my boat and the gear I use to tackle those big bronzebacks give me the best possible chance at success. Here are a few things I do to make sure all of my equipment is ready for the big water.

New lakes are always exciting, but they can be equally intimidating. I knew virtually nothing about Lake Oahe in South Dakota, other than it was huge and full of smallmouth bass … or so was the claim.

Entering this event, my expectations were high. The Upper Mississippi is thick with vegetation and other forms of shallow cover, perfect for my style and approach. In fact, my first trip to LaCrosse was particularly rewarding. The frog bite was off the hook, and I finished well within the money.

After a three-month postponement, BASS was finally able to hold the Sabine River event at Orange, Texas. The river was now back within its banks and conditions were stable after weeks of flooding.

Site selection for this year’s Texas BASSfest event was Lake Travis — a beautiful, deep and clear reservoir near the city of Austin.

During the pre-spawn, my bait of choice is a jerkbait and during the post-spawn, I love to throw topwater. This is nothing out of the ordinary as just about every bass angler uses these techniques during those times of the year, but one thing I like to mix in during both of these periods is a soft plastic jerkbait like the Yamamoto D-Shad. I fish it as a complement to my hard jerkbaits and walking topwater baits.

After a one-year hiatus, the Peteys, my year-end awards gala for the professional bass fishing industry, is back with a vengeance. After six years of Price Waterhouse, hanging chads (Morgenthaler/Grigsby/Pipkens/Brauer), Steve Harvey gaffes and minor tabulation scandals, we didn’t know if we’d be allowed to return, but one ankle bracelet later and it’s time to hand out some awards.

I haven’t been to Mexico since June, and I’m starting to feel a little bit itchy over the whole deal. I miss the fishing, the food, the people and the weather. I had one day available to fish in the past week and it was this Saturday, when the mercury didn’t rise above 31 degrees, so I elected to stay home.

The Robbins family, all of us consummate planners, has already locked in our first two away games of the 2020 fishing season – first a week in Mexico for bass in January, and then a shorter trip to a yet-to-be-disclosed offshore location in February.

I’m fairly certain that in 1981, when I was 11 years old, I did not know that there was such a thing as professional bass fishing, I had never used a baitcasting reel, and I had not been to a true tackle store.

Some years the tour level offseason seems unbearably long, but this time around it has been mercifully short, largely due to the fact that we’ve had an unprecedented amount of tournament news over the past couple of months. It wasn’t on-the-water news, but it kept us tuned to the internet nonetheless.

I’ve now watched four episodes of Mike Iaconelli’s “Fish My City” – filmed in Taipei, London, Austin and NYC – on NatGeo Wild. Despite my obvious obsession with the sport, I’m not a huge consumer of fishing television. There are very few shows out there that can hold my attention for even 30 minutes, let alone an hour or two. I have lots of them set to record on my DVR and after they pile up the vast majority end up getting deleted, usually without watching more than two or three minutes of the actual show, if any at all.

I was in Idaho last weekend on bass business, which still seems a bit odd because although they have exceptional fishing for both largemouths and smallmouths – it consistently takes over 20 pounds to win local tournaments – few of the locals seem to care about America’s most-chased freshwater gamefish.

I spent 48 hours in Idaho over the weekend, and except for hard-won breaks to catch a little sleep nearly all of that time was spent in meetings or in a vehicle driving to meetings. On Saturday, though, we had a 90 minute break while El Jefe dealt with some family matters. One member of our group had to go to the store, and I’d heard there was a tackle shop in town, so I asked if I lobbied to be dropped off on the way.

When I was in college in New York City 30 years ago, friends and I would venture down to Hester Street once or twice a semester to engage in what Eater NY called “the faux Little Italy experience.”