You’d swear these anglers would sit separately, hiding secret lures from one another. Instead, Terry “Big Show” Scroggins was urging his Toyota teammate Gerald Swindle to root around in his Triton’s rear deck dry storage compartment to get whatever worm weights or jigs Gerald needed to be better ready for Day 1 of competition on Friday morning.
“You don’t need paint on your spinnerbait head to catch a bass,” said Ashley, who’s fishing his fourth Classic in just five years on tour. “I’ve just always fished with plain old living rubber skirts and unpainted heads; I guess it’s a confidence thing,” said Ashley, who like VanDam, and other Quantum pros, typically chooses a mid-range 6.6:1 reel to cast his spinnerbaits on.
Fourteen hours before the first cast of his 22nd Classic, KVD was wiping on one last layer of boat wax in an effort to make his sponsor’s equipment look as good as possible, and to keep his professionalism at the pinnacle it constantly resides at, even on the eve of bass fishing’s biggest event.