I just can’t wait. I just can’t wait. For practice that is. I am excited for the tournament, but I just can’t wait for practice alone. You see, practice is something that as an amateur I just do not get enough of. As an amateur before a weekend tournament I might get 8 or 10 hours of practice between work, the wife and the kids. So I just can’t wait.

I am headed to Guntersville, Ala., for the last weekend before the dead period. The dead period starts 13 days before the tournament begins and at that time you can’t even so much as look at the word Guntersville according to the rules. I am so excited for this weekend and then the three days of practice before the tournament. Just the thought of three days straight, daylight to dark, finding fish and developing a pattern according to the conditions has me ecstatic.

Something really cool I have been thinking about is the fact that I will be running into the best pros in the world of fishing. How cool would it be if I ended up fishing for the same fish as the likes of Bryan Thrift, David Dudley, Scott Martin, Brent Ehrler, or even Stacey King? Man, I am excited if you haven’t noticed it yet. How cool would it be if I ended up in the back of a pocket on day one with my Power-Poles down and around the corner comes Stacey King headed to fish in the very spot I am in and he realizes my 50 feet are taken forcing him to skip to his next spot? Or what if I got on a flipping bite down the main channel mat and Scott Martin and I come head to head and switched water? How awesome would that be? My biggest dream would be sliding on stage nervous as a cat with 18 to 20 pounds in my sack thinking of day two and how awesome it would be to make the top 20 or even the top 10. Man, I am excited.

A four-day event is so much different than a one-day event. You have to have enough fish to last through four days and deal with the high probability of fish changing their pattern not once, but maybe twice. There are many more variables to a four-day tournament. As an amateur you wonder if you can cut it with the pros and now I finally have my opportunity to see if that dream can become a reality. It is not that if I zero I am not capable of fishing at this level because at the end of the day it is still called fishing. But I am looking forward to see if I can hang with the big dogs. After all, they are just the best in the world.