The Inside Line

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.

I like Kentucky Lake, but my track record there is weak at best. It’s full of bass — nearly all species in fact — but it can be fickle at times. And it’s almost always due to fluctuations in water level.

After competing on Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees so many times before, I felt my chances were strong going into this event, especially since it was spring.

The lake offers plenty of prime spawning habitat; including pea gravel and chunk rock banks within protected pockets. Visual targets include laydowns, willows, docks, bridges and all forms of rock transitions.

Each year many of us make New Year’s resolutions. It could be to lose some weight or kick a habit, but I am going to do it a little differently and make some fishing resolutions for the New Year.

“I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45.”

--Mick Jagger

If you’ve watched enough Bassmaster weigh-ins, surely you’ve seen someone weigh in a decent bag of fish, and before the applause dies down he says “But wait until you see the bag the guy behind me has.”

On Facebook, the website from which all knowledge stems, I recently found the page of Australia’s Barambah Lures. They make all sorts of lifelike creations, but I was particularly captivated by their parakeet imitators.

For a person who doesn’t like to be told what to do, I certainly have a lot of bosses.

One of the reasons Hanna and I go back to Anglers Inn again and again and again is because after a dozen or so trips the staff has started to feel like family. Actually, better than family – because none of my close relatives has ever unhooked a fish for me, tied a knot for me, or jumped up from the seated position to carry my overstuffed tackle bag from my boat to my room.

When Forrest Wood Cup champion Kevin Hawk traveled to Mexico with us in May of 2013, he brought the tools of a dedicated cranker – not just rod, reel, line and baits, but also a system for extracting his lures from the inevitable snags.

A few years ago I interviewed a female angler who seemed fairly legit. She wasn’t yet competitive at the Costa or Opens level, but she wasn’t far off. She had her own boat, a few local sponsors, and seemed to be doing things “the right way.”

Even though I more or less swore off competing in tournaments a few years ago, there are still certain derbies that I’m itching to fish someday. One is the US Open, which just seems badass, and another is the Sturgeon Bay Open, the 2018 iteration of which was just completed.

Just when I thought it was done, Kevin Baxter forced me back in the game.