Peter T and Nick

I love it when men aren't afraid to hug another man in celebration. Peter T gave his son Nick a bear hug on stage. And if you've ever seen Pete you know that he gives new meaning to the idea of a bear hug.

I'm pretty sure Nick is used to them.
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Dave Wolak needed wind

As he waited to weigh in, Dave Wolak knew he didn't have the weight to win. I think he almost dreaded going on stage after all the drama with Peter T and Kennedy. I felt bad for him. But hey....he's fishing in the finals for $250,000 in a no entry fee event. Life could be worse.

He said he needed the wind to blow this morning to get close to his incredible 22 lb bag he brought tp the scales yesterday.
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Bassmaster Memorial

I forgot that Peter T won the Bassmaster Memorial last year in Ft Worth. And today ensured that he would be the only angler to ever hold the Memorial trophy over his head.

By ONE ounce.
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Peter T says his day was fair

He knows he's close to the winner's circle but Peter T described his day today as only "fair." He says it definitely wasn't as good s yesterday but he doesn't know why. He caught them on a Zoom Super Fluke both days on the outside edges of grass lines 6 - 10 feet of water. He thinks he has 18 lbs. I'm headed over to the stage to see if that's enough to win.
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Steve Kennedy is not sure

Kennedy knows that he and Peter T are close and he was regretting the loss of a 5 pounder earlier in the day. He said he broke 65 lb braid today. Then he got on a swimbait pattern. He was excited about catching a 3 and a half pouind smallie on a swimbait. "I knew they'd hit it but to get one to eat it was fun"
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Murray's smallies

John Murray caught two nice brown fish on Onondaga today. Which was a surprise for him. He caught a half a dozen smallmouth but 2 were back to back and over three pounds. When I was at his boat he was encouraging BASS officials to "lock this lake in for next year."

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Jared Lintner's Heartbreak

Jared was kind of down in the mouth as waited backstage to weigh in. He broke off a 7 at the boat today and in general didn't have a great hook up-to-livewell ratio. "I lost more fish today than I've lost in the last two years," he said.

His heartbreak will soon be forgotten however as his wife Kerri was due to deliver their third child 5 days ago. He's flying home to California tomorrow and will be there for the birth. Lucky dog.
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Backstage with Dean Rojas

Dean doesn't think he has enough to win but says he caught a couple on the Dean Rojas Spro BronzeEye frog. He caught all his fish on a frog during qualifying on Oneida Lake but yesterday all his fish came flipping a Jungle Beaver. Dean loves to fish the frog so he was happy to catch a few on the TV day with his favorite technique.
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James Overstreet

My favorite photographer, James Overstreet, tells me he has taken "the best photograph I've ever taken at a BASS event" here at the Bassmaster Memorial. He says it is a picture of Dean Rojas catching a fish. I can't wait to see the ESPN photo gallery later today to see what the photo is like. Because Overstreet takes incvredible photographs every week. If he's this excited about a picture from this event it must be special. It will probably be in the Zoom Gallery, which is where all of Overstreet's best photography ends up after the event.
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Unofficial Leaders

Just heard that Steve Kennedy and Peter T are tied for first with 38 lbs. Unofficially.

On the competition days when we have a camera in the boat with each competitor, we can estimate what each angler has in terms of weight. BASS Federation Nation volunteers work all day running tapes in from the water so that the editors back on shore can put together footage to show on the Jumbotron during the weigh in and also put together packages for the Hooked Up internet show.

When an angler catches a fish, the volunteer notes the estimated weight in the field notes that come in with the tapes. Then the guys in the TV truck keeprunning tallies for the unofficial leaderboard you see during the live updates. So there's always lots of buzz around the TV truck as tapes come in and the stories from on the water unfold. It's always fun and pros who didn't make the cut will stop by backstage to see what we've heard. Timmy Horton is back here now.
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Steve Kennedy's practice

I just heard a story about Steve Kennedy that made me want to pull for him even more here at the Bassmaster Memorial.

Evidentally Steve's grandmother died last week. She was 94 years old and on here way to get a manicure and pedicure when she was in a car accident. Those details tell you a lot about a 94 year old woman - that she was still driving and that she was still getting pedicures. I bet she was a pistol.

Anyway, Steve only got one day of practice for this event. And here he is on the final day. I bet Grandma is smiling down right now.

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Baggo at BASS

The TV crew is always busy on the last day of the event because we do live updates to the internet every few hours. But between live shots there is usually a tournament within a tournament going on behind the stage - Baggo tournament that is.

Zona is usually the tournament organizer. Today he was teamed with the Bassmaster Elite Series TV producer, Mike McKinnis. They faced off with hosts - Tommy Sanders and Jerry McKinnis.

Baggo is a bean bag toss game, incase you're unfamiliar with it. You play to a score of 21. Today's tournament went 6 games with McKinnis/Sanders taking the championship.

Baggo is taken very seriously around here. Zona is sulking in a corner right now.
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Bassmaster Memorial Live Blog

Test to see if I can blog from the weigh in via my Blackberry.
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Oneida Elite Series

I am lucky enough to be attending the Oneida Elite Series event this weekend, but at the moment I seem to have lost my camera. So I don't have photos to share yet, but I will update tonight.

The crowds have been fantastic here. We are having the late take offs and late weigh ins and it seems to work so well to let the fans see the pros. There are so many people of all stripes here. It just amazes me that we all share this passion for bass fishing. Yesterday, I saw a woman in her 50's with a temporary tattoo featuring a pink BASS logo and the words "Bass Babe" beneath. You gotta love it.

It made me think of Sportscenter producer Don Barone's recent story and how he described the fans of fishing.

To a man, the pros are impressed with Lake Onondaga. This is a lake that's in the middle of town and it is just full of fish. And what a succes story. Because of polllution the lake was declared unsafe for swimming in 1940. By the 1970s, fishing was banned. Because of mercury contamination, the lake's bottom was listed as a Superfund site in 1994.

York State and the federal government continue to pursue remediation of these sites through the responsible parties. The State initiated a national resources damages claim in 1989.

Now professional anglers from as far away as Florida and California are singing the lake's praises.

I bet you will too when you see this episode of the Elite Series.

UPDATE: I just heard Jerry McKinnis and Jason Quinn say that New York had the finest bass fishing in the world on the 10am edition of Hooked Up on ESPNoutdoors.com. Now that ought to get the pot stirred!

Tim Tucker

YOU WILL BE MISSED

The first interaction I ever had with Tim Tucker was on an internet message board. I had heard of Tim, many stories in fact, and to tell you the truth I was a little scared of him. I was working as a producer on the FLW Tour back then and someone on the internet had found fault with the fact that I was fishing an event as a co-angler. A melee ensued and Tim Tucker came to my defense. I'll never forget that.

Here was this guy that I had heard stories about - the hard boiled writer who was tough as nails and held no quarter for any shenanigans when it came to the sport of bass fishing. And if there were lines drawn in the sand between the supporters of the two leagues in bass fishing, Tim definitely came down on the side opposite which I was standing at the time. Yet he sprang to the defense of a woman he did not know on a public message board known for it's ruthlessness toward anyone who disagreed with the pack.

He was a teddy bear.

We later became fast friends with a mutual respect that was drawn from our interest in and passion for the sport. We shared many laughs, gossiped while waiting for countless weigh-ins to start and celebrated the successes of our friends in the sport - both in front of the cameras and behind. Tim ruffled some feathers along the way, but no one could ever doubt where his heart was. He wanted only the best for the anglers he followed all over the country.

When I got the call today that Tim had passed away, it was like a kick in the stomach. You know, whenever these kinds of tragic events happen, it always occurs to me that none of us ever knows how fast we are hurtling towards the end. In my mind I envision it as an object moving at mach speed, with all the associated fireworks and sound efects, and then coming to an abrupt stop at a brick wall. Where it doesn’t matter that you were late to that last appointment, or that someone dogged you out at the office last week, or that you had a spat with your spouse over something inconsequential, or that you haven’t returned that email you meant to answer. We all race through life. Literally race. And when the end comes, most of the things we are so preoccupied with…..don’t matter.

I know that Tim was head over heals about his twins and that he spent a lot of time with them. He talked about them all the time. He seemed to have mastered the balance of work and life. His kids are around 10 years old so, thankfully, we can hope that his influence on them will be felt throughout their lives.

But at the end of the day, the little stuff really does not matter does it? Most of us will never know when the carousel will stop turning. Or when an ordinary afternoon will turn into a life changing event for the people who love us. It’s an old cliché’ but I think Tim would agree that we all need to take stock of our blessings and make sure the ones we love know the depth of our feelings and why we hold them dear.

I hope he had no regrets. And I’m glad the last words that Tim and I spoke to each other were kind ones.

Update 7/18: A trust fund has been set up for Tim's children. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that we honor Tim's memory with a donation to his children's fund.

Kyle and Rachel Tucker
PO Box 140607
Gainesville, FL 32614-0607


Please feel free to share your thoughts on Tim....

Horton's Web Cam

Tim Horton was so confident that he would win the Lake Champlain Elite Series that he came in at 10:00 this morning (the final day of the tournament) because he didn't want to risk the hour and a half run from the south end of the lake as the weather started to kick up. A gutsy move on his part, but he had a solid lead going into the day and 20+ pounds in the livewell. I have a feeling we will all be talking about this one for a long time. He caught his fish in the first 45 minutes after he arrived.

But the coolest thing is that we can watch all this unfold on the internet. ESPNoutdoors.com has an internet show that comes on several times throughout the final day of the tournament and today we got to hear Jerry McKinnis interview Timmy at the dock at noon. Even cooler, they are leaving a webcam up all day as Timmy sits at the dock waiting for the rest of the boats to check in.

In the screen grab above you can see Timmy at the dock and the guy over on the left is his cameraman, Wes Miller. He's on the phone. Talking to me! What a neat thing...I guess it's the next best thing to being there. I got to say congratulations to Timmy and watch him speak back to me through the internet. Relayed through Wes of course.

Moments later Timmy's wife Melanie and the girls showed up with pizza as you can see above. I know Tim appreciated both of those gestures. The women in his life AND the pizza.

I'll be checking on the web cam periodically not because there is anything particularly exciting to see, but just because I think it's so innovative. Of course, I'll also be watching the race and I have TrackPass, which allows me to listen to the crew radios and see what's up with my favorite drivers throughout the race. I can't wait until technology allows us to have a similar scenario in fishing.

I'll be burning up the broadband between fishing and racing this afternoon. I'm glad I got all my weekend chores done yesterday!

PS - Kudos to Timmy for growing his hair out to donate to Locks of Love. What a kind thing to do.

UPDATE: 12:30 Central Time
So Zona calls me having just gotten home from a shoot (which is the reason he couldn't be at the tournament today) and when I tell him to tune in to the web cam, he immediately wants Wes' phone number so he can call him too. The pic below shows Timmy giving us a shout out when Wes told him Z and I were watching. Okay, I admit it. We're geeks.

Tensaw dreams

My brother-from-a-different-mother, Bob Sanders, has an elegant (in a manly way) blog called Bobventures that can be found here. Bob has fished in both BASS and FLW events, and is a great angler. He would probably be on the Eite Series level if he had been born at a different time and had the opportunities presented the pros these days instead of developing into a business man, and now a genteel, southern farmer.

There's a post there where he described fishing in the Big Salkehatchie River swamp recently and he spoke of the 3 generations of men he knows who have fished there. I loved this post because it reminded me of so many stories I heard from my Daddy while I was growing up.

Daddy is from Baldwin County, Alabama and fished the backwaters of the Mobile Delta as a kid and a young adult. He skulled those bayous for catfish, bream and bass (or what my grandmother called green trout) and was also known to bring home the makings for my grandmother's famous turtle soup. My grandmother could bring home dinner from the creek herself as well.

His fishing outings circumnavigated a convenient loop that included the Tensaw River and the Mobile River which I highlighted below on the map. (You can click the map to make it bigger if you're interested.) I grew up hearing stories about places like Live Oak Landing, the Dog River, Polecat Bay, Doctor Lake and even (unfathomably now) a placename that contains a racial slur. He was known to skip school to fish all day. To think that as a youngster of 14 or 15, my Daddy would get in his little tin boat with a 25 horse motor and stay out all day in that swamp seems remarkable now. I doubt my teenaged nephews could do. No, I KNOW my nephews could not do it.

I would love to be brave enough to fish that loop today. But I would most likely find myself lost in a swamp and carried off by mosquitoes before I found my way out.

What does this have to do with professional bass fishing? Not much, other than the idea that everyone starts somewhere and I would be willing to bet almost every angler earning a living by fishing today has a story of how they got started in the sport that includes tales and memories of their father or uncle or grandfather or even a grandma.

Thanks for reviving that memory, Bob.

Bass fishing on Myspace

I'm surprised at the number of professional anglers who DON'T have Myspace pages. Myspace is a great place to let people, especially young people, get to know more about you. Several pros do have Myspace pages and you can figure out pretty quickly which page is a fan page and which page is actually created by the pro.

Take Kevin Vandam for example (okay, this blog is turning into the KVD fan club but whatever...) Here's his "official" Myspace page. And here's a fan site.

And, going down the current Angler of the Year rankings, here's a Skeet Reese page. I can't tell if this is his official page or note because there is another one just like it. Who knows?

Aaron Martens has a Myspace page. I can't tell if it's really his page or a fan site. But he has me in his top friends, so I think it's probably really him. Plus, his blurb talks about his wife, Lesley, and spells her name right. I guess I could just message him and ask, but I hate to bother. Although it IS social networking right? Key word - SOCIAL?

I love Jason Quinn's page and especially his song. But I really love that his wife has a Myspace page. Taffi rocks. She has great pictures there and blogs a bit about what is going on in the Quinn world. Jason's PARENT's even have a Myspace site. Whatchawannabet that Taffi designed it?

Mark Zona even has a Myspace page. I like his interactive map widget that shows where his friends are located.

I searched Myspace for FLW Tour anglers, but I couldn't find any profiles. Not sure why.

KVD definitely has the most Myspace "friends" with over 2100. And just glancing through them it seems that the majority are young people. I think it's great that these pros are reaching out to young kids in a network that young people clearly love. Great way to influence them.

Social networking reaches huge numbers of people. And it is a great way to drive traffic to your personal website, if you have one.