Game on boys…back on the water! Glad to be back!

I'm having a little break in between tournaments is kinda nice – I get to regroup, especially after having not such a good first event.

But, I am fired up and ready to go to Okeechobee.

But, I’m not even there yet; I’m on the St John’s for a little bit this week; practicing for the Elite Series – checking some stuff that I didn’t check before and I’ve been trying to find something else that not a lot of other guys found, you know?

You will get what Big Show did and he went opposite direction of most guys and found some fish that really hadn’t been pressured too much and finished second.

So, I am fired up with the new Lithium Batteries from Smart Batteries, they have been awesome on the water, because I am putting in long days and I am hammering on my MotorGuide; HARD! I guarantee you I spent at least eight hours on the trolling motor and didn’t even have a glitch and the battery still charged in two and a half hours.

I love these things! My boat is running good; I mean it’s got my Ranger Z521 and Yamaha 250 SHO running about 73 M-P-H solid on my Lowrance GPS.

So, on the water; hopefully Okeechobee will pay off and I will hit you guys after practice and let you know what’s going on. Hopefully I’ll catch ‘em; I’ll let you know what’s going on.

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Well, Sometimes it goes and sometimes it don't... My River2Sea Biggie Poppa crankbait was ON FIRE throughout practice and the first day of the tournament and I really felt like I was going to do very well in that Open and possibly have an opportunity to win it, but Chris Lane did a great job and smoked everybody!

But I am really excited about Biggie Crank, you know, it is going to be pretty awesome. It is one of those crank baits that I mean, I can wind it as hard as I want and it will still run straight. The colors are hot – I’m just super excited about it.

Got to shoot some video with it – that and Bling; my new spinnerbait – you’ll get to see that coming soon from River2Sea. That was pretty awesome. We got on another lake down in Florida and caught a bunch of different fish on it so, I am really excited about the bait for the upcoming tournament season.
So, besides shooting video on my newest baits and fishing a tournament there really hasn’t been too much else going on.

Got my Lithium batteries installed on my boat from the Smart Battery guys. Pretty excited about those too; those worked really well over the course of the last two weeks and I don’t think you can run ‘em down! I’ve tried hard to run those things down. And it’s pretty incredible!

So, Mike Dean at Moto-Stop is building me a custom box for ‘em; these things are going to fit in my boat. I mean, my three trolling motor batteries are a total of like 90 pounds which is taking like 2/3 of the weight out of the boat.
Which means, my Z521 Ranger is going to run a whole lot faster!

Home for a week; gotta get stuff done with Uncle Sam; you know, taxes, everybody’s favorite time of year! I gotta get that done and move forward on to what’s going to happen for this season.

So, other than that, talk to you guys next week. See you later.

www.yoishstore.com

Well, Christmas and New Years are over with, and I’ve finished a lot and headed east! My Ranger came in and I was on a hard press for a whole week, the only day I took off was Christmas to get prepared; to get ready to go.

About a week ago, I headed down to Liquid Wraps in Arizona and got my boat wrapped; Tim’s awesome! He’s got – how do I put it? He’s a perfectionist and he loves to make sure that my wrap is perfect and looking really good!

Everything is mounted on there, the new Yamaha 250 SHO; I’ve got dual Power Poles; running four Lowrance units – HDS units, got a Sonic Hub, a five, an eight and two tens on my boat this year. I also got in my new rods and reels from Daiwa, and they’re all lined up and ready to go.

I had so much going on that it was hard to put it all together – like I said, I was packing everything for the season, but I had a couple more photo shoots; then Bass University in Shreveport last weekend too. Speaking of that, Hey folks, if you haven’t had a chance, go to either my website or the Bass University link to the website and check it out. It may give you something that you may want to come and see in 2012 – there a lot of good stuff happening there.

I got down to Florida and I actually put in the last part on my boat; I put in the two new batteries. The small Smart Battery, which is a Lithium battery. Yes, I know, Skeet Reese and Aaron Martens are running them and I’m trying to be like them – no! Not trying to be like Skeet and Aaron – I have been thinking about these batteries for a while. They are a whole lot lighter and a whole lot stronger than your conventional batteries, but, I had those put in the boat as soon as I got here.

Other than that, I got a little break in time with my boat; and have been working hard on finishing up some new baits coming from River2Sea. I gotta tell you folks, you don’t even understand how excited I am about the new baits that I have coming for 2012 coming from River2Sea!

After the Smart Battery install, I’ve got a crew from River2Sea coming to Florida to film some video for my new crankbaits and new spinnerbait that are coming out here shortly. The baits are NICE, and the whole marketing campaign is cool; I can’t wait to show it all to you – and I will, at the Classic… Baby; Baby!

Other than that I’m really excited and looking forward to the year – looking forward to the 2012 season.

It’s a week before Christmas and I got lots of things going on. You know, prep time is still going on.

Got to squeeze in some fishing I filmed Ultimate Match Fishing I am very excited about the show I always love being on UMF, it was a great deal – you know, the guy I was fishing against is awesome and I think you folks are really going to enjoy the show. It was really good; a couple of surprises which I like for this year.

I got to go fishing there, which was fun and caught some good ones and had a good practice too and caught a bunch of fish there, and nice warm weather. That’s the one thing that I have to say that I like and am looking most forward to as the season starts is warmer weather.

Other than that, I’m just getting ready; the boat should be here any day now and I’m going to be hard pressed putting it together; I mean, we are basically taking the Z 521 Ranger and starting from scratch. You know, I’m running the Bob’s Jack plate which I’ve got to put on; gotta put on dual Power Poles; and you know I gotta put the SHO Yamaha motor on there; the Lowrance Electronics. I am going to have the battleship prepped! It’s going to be prepped with Lowrance HDS 10’s and I am just so excited about that. Don’t forget the workhorse, the MotorGuide Trolling motor, gotta get that mounted on there as well.

So, it is going to be putting everything on the boat and then hopefully on the following week I will be putting everything in the boat and I will be telling you guys about that and getting you guys some video here of the rigging of the boat and you will kind of be getting an idea of where I start every year and how I end up.

You know, anybody that says preparation is overrated is definitely a person who needs to prep because you know what they say about luck – it is preparation meeting opportunity and it is if you get both of those things coming together can make a lot of things happen.

So, I have been cranking out a lot of articles so there will be a lot of good stuff out there for you guys to read and I get my teaser emails from my hot new soft plastics company about all the new baits that are coming in here pretty soon, so that’s got me a lot of excited too!

Just reading Advanced Angler and the rest of the news on all the good sites out
there every morning; you know, with my morning cup of hot tea.

So, until next week during the prep, I will catch you guys on the flip side!