The Hustle and Bustle of Tour Life

I swear it was just yesterday I was preparing for the first FLW Tour stop of the season. Now, we’re rounding second base as I find myself sitting in my Lance Camper down in Kentucky preparing for the fourth stop of the year on Lake Cumberland.

Time seems to fly when you pursue bass fishing as a career. It’s crazy, really. It seems my days are mostly filled with either sun up to sun down fishing or when I’m not fishing (which is a rarity), it’s sun up to sun down driving. Sometimes I feel as though I have as much in common with the truckers along the freeway as I do with touring anglers.

The fishing is the easy part, the business side on the other hand, brings another aspect all together. Show season has been upon us and it’s our time as sponsored anglers to do our part in the booth. That’s a unique value of the sport that I really cherish. No other sport offers much for consumer shows where you can interact face to face with the pros like you can in the fishing and hunting world. It’s great in my opinion. We get to use the products we endorse on a everyday basis through all types of conditions, making us the perfect Q&A dummies for all the eager outdoorsman looking to invest their hard earned dollars. It’s truly what makes our sport go round.

Aside from the fishing and the business, my wife, Bri, and I have been settling into our new home up in northern Minnesota, just down the road from famed Lake Mille Lacs. We bought a house up there late last year and have been putting in lots of work to get it move-in ready. As a bass fishing family, we don’t need much – trust me you should see the hotels we’ve stayed at before we starting camping – but after all the time we spend on the road, there’s never anything as good as home. So, thanks to our awesome friends and family that have been putting in the extra work.

I’ve guided my share of days up on Mille Lacs over the years for giant smallmouth and the chance to live minutes from the boat ramp was something we just had to jump on no matter how crazy of a year we had planned already. The best part is no more two-hour drives to and from the lake every day to put my clients on fish!

Now, as I sit here writing this blog entry, time seems to have slowed down a bit. Or at least 100 percent of my focus is now zeroed in on the task at hand, FISHING!

After a solid finish at Travis I jumped up hard in the points, but finishing in the middle of the pack at the Harris Chain, I only moved up a few more points in the coveted Angler of the Year standings – getting closer to qualifying for the Forrest Wood Cup. I need to dig deep over the next couple events and cash checks, along with hopefully making a top 10 or 20 to get myself closer to contention to qualify for the Cup.

I managed a quick prepractice or better said, a run-around of both Cumberland and Beaver and really like what I saw. I didn’t do much for fishing, but these highland reservoirs tend to suit my style of combat fishing pretty well. Add the addition of smallmouth bass and a Northern angler starts getting pretty excited! One thing I can promise you, I have way too many Daiwa spinning poles rigged up, which doesn’t hurt my feelings none either.

Time to go fishing!