Well, I fished my first tournament out of my brand new Nitro Z18, and I gotta say, the new boat is off to a pretty solid start: 2nd place out of a 275 boat field.  It was an extremely bitter/sweet experience though.  We missed the big win (and a new $30,000 boat) by a mere 0.37 pounds.  A pretty tough pill to swallow.  It seems like every year I fish this deal, I get pretty close to the win, but this was most definitely the closest I’ve been.  While getting so close to a big win is cool, that’s not the real reason I fish this tournament.  It’s about giving just a little bit back to our men and women serving in the armed forces. [Read more…]

It has been the longest and most stressful 4.5 months of my life, but it’s finally time to make the announcement!  I’ve got a new boat!!!  Such an enormous sense of relief.  There’s been a pretty solid plan in place for about 3 months now, but I have waited to make the announcement until I actually had the boat in my possession and ready to roll.  I’ve learned in my life that nothing is a done deal until it is actually a done deal, and it really wasn’t a done deal until this past week.  Before I go into details about that though, here’s the official announcement: I have teamed up with Bass Pro Shops / Nitro boats / Tracker and have joined their Pro Staff.

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This whole not having a boat thing SUCKS.  I’m going on about 2.5 months now of no boat.  I knew in the back of my mind that there was the possibility of this happening, but I didn’t think it actually would.  I figured, maybe a month and I’d be back in a boat.

Now, before I go into any details here, let me first say, that I have had access to a couple of friends’ boats who have been extremely generous in letting me borrow their boats to continue guiding.   [Read more…]

Well, word seems to have gotten around now about the fact that I managed to sink my boat the weekend following Memorial Day. The week afterward was very hard financially, emotionally, and physically, but I received a pretty big outpouring of moral support from friends, family, and fellow anglers (many of which I have never even personally met). So I wanted to throw a big THANK YOU out there to everyone who has reached out to me since then. Ya’ll have been great. There’s been a lot of questions, and I’ve been promising to “tell the tale,” so here it is… [Read more…]

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to putting a fresh, new look to the website. The thought to do it was spurred on by a couple of clients and friends who mentioned that they were having a difficult time finding the page on my old website that gave information about my guide services. I started asking several people, and many said that they had no problems navigating my previous website, but if just one or two people are having difficulty in contacting me to book a trip… that’s too many! [Read more…]