Olebiker

Martin, that is too weird! That is exactly what happened.

Only when I was riding with Cliff Prince and we came upon a flock of coots. One of them got off the water a little slowly and zoomed past my face about six inches away.

I don't always cast at schooling fish, but when I do my first cast is always a backlash.

Lou Malnati's in Chicago. It's worth the trip to Chicago just to eat there.

They are opening in Tallahassee in a little over a month. It's on my way home from work.

Years ago my father and I were on Taylorsville Lake in Kentucky. It was shortly after dawn and we had already caught a few fish on a flat just below a hillside. There was a light mist coming off the water and a beagle hound was running a rabbit on the hill above us. Dad turned around and grinned at me and said, "I wonder what Jesus is doing with the boys He doesn't love this morning." The theology may have been a little questionable but I knew exactly how he felt.

One of my daughters here in Tallahassee is trying to get a house built. They have been working with a builder for months and it takes repeated calls to the guy to get him to do anything. Seems like it was just yesterday they were begging for work.

A few guys have tried it but it was just to difficult to try to manage the travel logistics, the wear and tear on the angler's body, and the time away from family.

Texposed, weightless. I also fish them wacky style with a weedless hook when I want something a little less subtle.

Most of my Carolina rigging is done in water less than 20 feet deep that has some sort of wood on it. I use 5/8 oz. Mojo Carolina rig weights since they come through the cover more easily and I don't get hung up as much:

Every time I have occasion to use a Motorguide I wonder how the company stays in business. Everyone I have ever used has been noisy and the steering is imprecise compared to a Minn Kota. I have an MK Maxxum 80 pound coming.

7 pounds 6 ounces on Lake Talquin, September 30, 2007. Skipped a green 5" Senko up under some overhanging trees.

We have a sporting goods shop here in Tallahassee, Kevin's, that carries a good selection of bass tackle and will match Tackle Warehouse prices. The guys that work in the fishing section are knowledgeable and friendly. Academy Sports just opened here and when I first went in a gentleman who said he is responsible for the fishing departments in this part of the country asked a couple of us what they didn't have that they needed to carry. We used to have a Sportsman's Warehouse that never seemed to understand that concept. They stocked the store as if they were in the Pacific Northwest. They didn't last a year. When I first moved to Tallahassee over twenty years ago I did a lot of bicycling. There was a shop that treated everyone as if they were criminals trying to shoplift the whole store. Until the day they went out of business I tried to explain to the owner that he was running people off with that attitude.

After practicing all day for a tournament without catching anything I am prone to say, "Well, I eliminated a lot of water today."

I fish out of a Heritage Redfish 14 right now since I fish for both bass and saltwater species. If I was going to buy a bass-only kayak it would be a Wilderness Systems Ride 11.5. It is wide enough that you can stand in it. The seat is very adjustable fore and aft and the boat is built so that the water drains away from the seat.

Had a tournament Saturday on Lake Talquin, just outside Tallahassee. It's the middle of summer and it has been hot as blue blazes so I figured I was in like Flint when I drew a partner who is a whiz at Carolina rigging the ledges. We were fishing out of his boat and he told me to bring two rods: a Carolina rig and a back-up Carolina rig. We went to Hurricane Ledge first thing. He had caught ten bass on ten casts there one morning last week. We fished it for about 90 minutes with no strikes at all. We then started a milk run of five or six spots and finally, after noon, he caught two fish and I caught one. We got to the weigh-in and found that the guys who had done well had caught them shallow, in the lily pads. Whouda thunk it??!! I got thinking about it and remembered that the water temperature started out at 84 degrees and topped out at about 88. This time of the year it is normally well into the 90s. We have been getting afternoon thunderstorms just about every day and it looks like the fish were taking advantage of that highly oxygenated water up shallow. I'll just have to add that set of circumstances to my data bank.

I loved it when folks realized "oh yeah, it's Ode to Joy we need to stand up."

You can catch bass on Zoom Horny Toad type frogs any time and place you would catch them on a buzz bait.

If the kayak did not come with an anchor trolley get one. They are simple to install and, in my experience, priceless.

I have one and it is just great. Installation is very simple and straightforward. If I can do it, anyone can. I had it on the console at first and moved it to the bow when I bought a side imaging unit. The two units are Interlinked.

The first time I took my father's old Bass Tracker on Lake Talquin I was idling away from the dock watching the depth finder. I was amazed at the quality of the images I was getting and was surprised at how deep the water was. About that time, in 22 feet of water, I ran into a stump. It took me a few minutes to figure out that the depthfiinder was in "demo" mode. I was sure glad I was alone.

Tallahassee Bass Anglers license plate on the front of the truck, Humminbird, Falcon Rods, and B.A.S.S. stickers in the rear window, caved in license plate in the rear from hitting it with the trailer while hooking up the boat.

I have always fished a Skinny Dipper type bait with a weighted hook but I have a little trouble with getting a consistent hookup. Cliff Prince used a swim jig head with the swimbait and didn't miss a single fish with that technique.

I have to get better about proof reading. It was Cliff Prince.

I thought I might give you a little rundown on my experience as a marshal at the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Lake Okeechobee last week. My first day fisherman was Jason Williamson. Now I’m about as fearless as Dick Tracy, but that boy just about scared me to death on the first run of the morning. I figured that I would sit on my cap while we were running down the lake so it wouldn’t blow out of the boat. That would have worked really well if I could have stayed in the seat. I was airborne about half the time and the hat blew out from underneath me. I had cramps in both arms from holding on trying to stay in the seat. We ran to the Monkey Box and stayed in that area all day. Jason made about a dozen casts with a toad, pitched a Sweet Beaver about six times and pitched a 1 ounce blue jig with a blue Zoom trailer the rest of the day. The day got off to a slow start and, by 10:30, he didn’t have a fish in the boat. In the next two hours, though, he caught about fifteen fish and culled twice to end up with 17 pounds 7 ounces, good enough for 13th place. Ish Monroe, the first one to weigh in, had 34 pounds. I think it was Bill Lowen who said he felt like he must be fishing on a different lake than Ish. I rode with Cliff Prince on Friday. It was my first experience in the new Sterling bass boat. After Thursday’s exciting boat ride I was concerned about riding in that Sterling, a boat renowned for it’s speed. When I got in the boat my concern turned to near panic when I realized that it was a single console and there was not a single hand hold on the passenger side. I needn’t have been concerned, though, as the Sterling was a remarkably smooth, dry ride. I never once got airborne. The only negative thing related to the boat ride was when we rode through a flock of coots at nearly 70 mph and one of them flew between me and Cliff missing my face by about a foot. We were about the fourth boat out and went to a big shallow flat where Cliff caught a 5# on about his tenth cast. Another fish around 3# and a couple of little squealers came along in the first hour. At one point I looked up and counted more than twenty tournament boats on the flat. After the fish quit on the flat we ran down toward Moorhaven and into the rim ditch where he finished his limit and culled one of the little guys fishing a Texas rigged junebug Speed Worm. Every plastic bait he threw except a Gambler version of the Skinny Dipper was junebug. Speaking of the Skinny Dipper, I learned a neat rigging technique from him that should drastically improve my hookup ratio. I can’t wait to try it. I don’t believe Cliff caught a single fish after noon. That made for a long afternoon. We spent about ninety minutes that afternoon on a flat covered with scattered lily pads. It was about three feet deep and had some hydrilla about a foot and a half off the bottom. The place was covered with beds and a few still had fish on them. Skeet Reese and Alton Jones were also on the flat looking for late spawners. The competitors were all very considerate of each other and seemed to share a lot of information with each other. At one point this afternoon Cliff, thinking that he would not make the cut, pointed out a four pound bass still on a bed to Skeet Reese. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and professional bass fishermen. My day three fisherman was Marty Robinson. Marty had made the long run down close to Clewiston on Friday and caught 20 pounds in about two hours. We made that same run first thing Saturday morning. He pulled the Skeeter back into the reeds just off the main lake and broke out a push pole to get around. He also turned off both depth finders fearing that any noise might spook the fish. I commented that I had been surprised at how unconcerned the other two fishermen had been about the noise their trolling motors made crashing through the weeds. “That’s just laziness on their part,” he said We stayed in the same area almost all day. Marty fished two baits all day: a blue Sweet Beaver and a watermelon red Magnum Speed Worm. He would pitch the Sweet Beaver to all of the spots he could reach and then cast the worm which he would swim across the water almost like you would fish a Horny Toad. He caught a 1 pound fish pretty quickly and then jumped off a fish that looked to me to be about four pounds. He insisted that it was a six. At some point during the morning he caught a three and about a dozen 12 inch fish. About one o’clock he gave up on the push pole and started using the MotorGuide. There were several boats from a tournament out of Clewiston fishing in the area including one who had a radio blasting soft rock hits from the eighties for about two hours. We didn’t see him boat a fish. The other boats seemed to be doing OK on spinner baits. With about an hour to go until check-in we left and made the long run back toward Okeechobee. We made a stop at some wind-blown reeds where Marty caught a five on the Sweet Beaver with about twenty minutes to go. He ended up with 12 pounds. All in all it was a great experience with most of the fishermen being friendly and gracious. I got to play with Mike Iaconelli’s 13 month old baby Vegas while he signed autographs and posed for pictures with everyone who came by. Gerald Swindle and I talked about deer hunting and he told me that he loves hunting a lot more than fishing. Bradley Roy, a fellow Kentucky boy, and I talked about how he had stayed up too late the night before watching Kentucky beat Indiana.