Louis

by Louis Summerville

I read every thing that I can get my hands on about bass fishing, watch as many tv show that come on the air, buy video's on how to just in case there is something I may have missed that someone else is doing.

When I was a young man I played multiple sports, football, baseball, basket ball, ran track, so you get the picture of how I have always been competitive my whole life. But the one thing I have always loved doing is going fishing, we are not talking about bass tournaments at this point but just getting together with your child hood friends and heading to the river, lake, or pond to catch anything that is willing to bite your line, what a great day that was.

I started fishing for bass in 1980, and found it very thrilling to see how many bass I could fool into biting the artificial worm, crank bait that I was casting out at the time. but while in the Navy in a co worker came to me and asked if I fished, and of course I said yes, the reason he asked was that he had paid for a team bass tournament and his partner had backed out on him at the last minute.

He informed me that he was on good fish but had to have two people in the boat, which I told Dave this is good but I have never fished a bass tournament before, but have fished all my life.

He picked me up about 3am in the morning which was the earliest I had ever left my house to go fishing, the first thing came out of his mouth after good morning was do you know how to back a boat up. since I had a little 14 ft Jon boat, I had done this several times, but I have to admit that launching that 18 foot winner boat was a bit different. we blasted off and the day started off very well he gave me popper bait, and on the fourth cast the water exploded and I was hooked for life a 2 1/2 pound large mouth entered the boat.

I will admit that we weighed in a limit of 10 fish and finished 2ND place in the tournament and caught the big bass of the tournament, out of the ten fish Dave had 7 of them in the boat but 3 of mine helped us finish well in the tournament. The only problem is that I missed about 6 fish that day from broken line, to letting them jump and spit the lure, I didn't have the experience to lower my rod tip to help keep them from jumping. but from that day fourth Dave and I fished the tournament trail as partners, I even joined his bass club this was while is was stationed in Norfolk Va.