Check-in Time with Kurt Dove
What an FLW pro is up to right now
From time to time, FLW checks in with its anglers to find out what they’ve been up to, what they’re listening to, who they’re following and where they’re heading while out on the tournament trail. This week, we caught up with Kurt Dove.
What are you up to lately?
I’m getting ready for the 2020 Pro Bass Youth Camp, getting dates together and timeframes. We’re going to have the pro bass camp in the first couple of weeks of June here at Lake Amistad in Texas, which will be our ninth annual camp in Texas. Then, we’re going to have the second annual camp in New York in the last week of July on Oneida. We should be releasing all that information in December for campers to sign up.
But, primarily, I’m working with Hayabusa. This is the time of year that you make sure you send out all your angler contracts. And I’m helping to develop a new 2020 catalog for our hook products.
The most exciting thing I have going on currently is that I just picked up my 2020 Ranger 520L, and the prepping and rigging happens on the weekends. I’m hoping to get out on the water sometime after Thanksgiving to test it out.
Tell us more about the camp and how it got started. It seems like a big project.
When I originally got started I partnered with a nonprofit organization, the Donald R. Kemp Youth Hunt Club over in New Mexico. The first year was 2012, and it’s evolved from there. This year I did three separate camps – two in Texas and one in New York. There are some labor-intensive moments, but it’s not too bad. You just wait for the [tournament] schedules to come out and set some dates. Luckily, I have a lot of connections in the industry, so it works out well for the youth, and that’s what’s important.
Most professional anglers enjoy showcasing their passion with our youth, and that’s the best part. My camps usually have 20 to 24 participants, and we have two youth anglers per instructor. The instructor takes them out and shows them, based on current conditions for where we’re at, whether in New York or Texas, “this is how we would attack this and go about locating bass.” The whole camp process is how to locate fish, pattern fish and duplicate patterns based on weather conditions that vary throughout the four days as we all see in tournament bass fishing; and also different techniques that you can use during that particular camp session. The cool thing is kids can come back over and over again, and they learn things all the time. Conditions change, and time of year changes. We get a lot of repeats and new youth signing up all the time.
I find that, more and more, with the high school programs and college programs like FLW runs, there are young anglers that get into fishing just through their friends, and this is an outlet that’s provided now that wasn’t 15 years ago. And now you have youth anglers that want to fish, and their parents don’t know anything about it. Well, 15 or 20 years ago all the youth that fished did it because their grandparents or mom and dad took them fishing because that’s what they were into. Now the dynamic is changing. And I think there’s a place for professional anglers and weekend anglers alike to provide help to youth anglers that have no other outlet for it.
Where are you headed next?
I’ve got quite a bit of travel coming up. I’m going to the Ranger Advantage Tour in December, and then I’m going to a distributor show in Connecticut, and then I’ll visit my family in Virginia over Christmas after that.
Who are you following on social media?
My buddies, Brad Hallman and Bryan Schmitt. I try to stay off it this time of year, you know. So just friends; keeping up with friends, where they’ve been, what they’re doing, what they’re up to.
And I always love watching all the fishing YouTube stuff. Last night I was watching FLW Live on YouTube from the Cup because I hadn’t seen it yet. No joke. I like being able to go back and watch the shows of the events that you’re in. You just learn that much more about the fishing and body of water you were in and different techniques that worked well. So when I’m not fishing I’m watching fishing. It’s terrible. You could ask my wife about it.
What bait or technique are you trying to master right now?
I would say I’m still dinking with the spybait and how to get more efficient with it, especially in the colder months and colder water conditions. I did throw it some at the Cup, so I’m trying to incorporate it into all seasons of the year, but I just haven’t quite dialed it in yet. I’m still working at it. It’s fun to throw, and I love to work on different techniques. That’s definitely one of them that I’ve been playing with.