It’s never too early to start preparing for the Bassmaster Classic, and as soon as I wrapped up my final tournament of the year — the St. Croix Bassmaster Southern Open on Lake Hartwell — I headed to Knoxville, Tenn., to spend some time on the waters where we’ll fish in March.
I didn’t do much fishing, I just idled around and looked for hard spots where they might position when we’re there. Fort Loudoun and Tellico lakes are going to be quite a bit lower during the Classic timeframe, so I was just looking for relatively shallow structure that the fish might set up on during the prespawn.
I don’t know if it’s going to do any good or not, but I dropped a lot of waypoints on anything that looked out of the ordinary. This will, at least, give me something to start on once Classic week begins.
After that, I turned my attention to some much-needed off-season R&R. I’ll do a lot of hunting during the fall, especially for pheasant in western Minnesota. My cousin has a couple of German wirehair pointers that we try to take out once or twice a week. I definitely enjoy this, but pheasant hunting is still a ton of work — I’ll bet we put in five miles a day doing this.
The good thing about pheasant hunting is that you can’t shoot before 9 a.m. in Minnesota, so you don’t have to get up at 3 in the morning. I used to do a ton of duck hunting, and very early starts were just part of it. With pheasant hunting, you can get out there after an early breakfast, hunt all day and not kill yourself.
I’ll also spend a lot of time deer hunting this fall. It’s kind of a family deal where my dad, my uncle, my cousin and I spend about a week in a one-room shack on 40 acres.
It’s about half a mile off any road, so you have to take everything in on a four-wheeler. It doesn’t have running water, so we pack in our water, heat it with a barrel stove and wood and cook everything on propane. We have a little sauna in the back so every couple of days you can get cleaned up.
This is a really relaxing time for me, and it’s more about the camaraderie — I haven’t pulled the trigger once in the past two years, but I still enjoy being out there. We really don’t discuss tournament bass fishing a lot, but I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about it and ordering a bunch of tackle I don’t need.
It’s really off the grid and that’s really important for allowing myself to rest from a busy season and prepare for the next one. There’s another goal you have to try to accomplish throughout the year, and as soon as one event’s done you’re thinking about the next one without any time to decompress.
When I finally get a couple weeks between tournaments, I kind of feel worse because I’ve ignored all the pain and all the other stuff you go through during the season just to try to keep working through it. That’s why it’s good to have a few months off, so you can take time to heal up, both mentally and physically, and get ready for the next season.
