Tiff and I are posted up at Dardanelle now to spend some time fishing and doing an auctioned trip Bass Mafia did last year to raise money for Hurricane Harvey and Irma relief.  We’ve been a bit nomadic the past month after the Bassmaster Classic wrapped up.  Our last stop was at Lake Fork, but since we’re a bit more likely to have an upcoming event at Dardanelle, we decided to head up there a little early.

Before our last month being nomads, it was all about the Classic.  It was a crazy one as you can see in video I posted on Monday.  Going in, I felt like I knew what I needed to do to win, but was never able to get on them in practice.  By the last day of practice, things finally started to click.

Jason led the first two days and I think most people thought he would finish it out.  For me, I knew in order to catch him, I would need a really big bag the final day.  I figured it would take 25-26 pounds for a chance.  Looking back, the door was wide open and somewhere around that 21-22 pound range probably would have been enough.

For me it was about execution.  I was fishing a similar pattern to Jason running the shallow dirty pockets until the final day.  You would’ve thought more fish would be coming, but it changed that day.  I made some adjustments and started running some cleaner water and started seeing what I wanted.  In the second pocket on the second dock I pulled up to, I caught a four pounder on the new Storm prototype.  I look under there and I saw an even bigger one in the five pound range.

I left shortly afterwards and kept cruising around looking for bigger fish.  I would pass up 3.5-4 pounders because I thought I needed 5-6 pounders.  I think I fished too fast and Jordan ended up winning because he let it happen.  He caught everything and didn’t try to force it.

I’m not upset with this year’s Classic.  It’s probably the one I’ve learned the most from in my career.  Even though it was frustrating, it just fuels the fire for the next one.

After leaving Greenville, I headed to Amistad to do a Yamaha Outdoors Motorsports event.  We did a turkey hunt on the first day and fishing on the second.  We went to Wade Middleton’s place which was pretty cool.  Jeff Kriet was there as well as people from Yamaha and various writer’s, including some I had never met before.

Afterwards we made stops at Lake Travis, Sam Rayburn and the Crochet’s house for Easter.  While at the Crochet’s, Tiff and I spent a day in New Orleans which was pretty neat.  I hadn’t been there since the last Classic there.  We also stopped off at Sam Rayburn to do an event with Rapala, VMC and Storm.  While there, we found out that the Sabine River event was postponed.

So, we headed to Lake Travis to poke around.  I didn’t really know what to expect going in.  It’s a pretty diverse fishery with a really clear, deep lower end and a flat dirty upper portion.  It kind of reminds me of a Western desert lake like Havasu.  We spent a couple days there then made our way to Lake Fork.

At Fork, we met up with the Ledoux’s from Thursday to Saturday.  Kevin and I travelled together on the Elites and his wife and Tiff are very good friends too.  We gathered some content there for a new bait I’ve been working on with Storm for the past few years too.  Those fish at Lake Fork really seemed to like it.