Way to big league us, Rapala.

Either way, I can burn it, and I'll pump it a lot on those, especially later in the year.

with warmer temps i kind of tend to fish it along and pop it and rip it right um then as it gets cold like this is a bait i can throw all fall you know september october november this bait will catch fish on the river systems and later in the fall i tend to do more of a yo-yo um And they'll get it on the fall a lot like you'd fish a blade bait, just a little more aggressive than you would with a blade bait.

But still catches them right to the bitter end.

And really good bait for just covering water, especially on those big flats on the Mississippi River.

They're pretty expansive.

And then the sweet spots are very small.

It's a lot of clean bottom.

Who do you think the best shallow water fisherman on Earth is?

Uh, at the moment, uh, I mean, it...

You- the la- two of the three guys that come to mind had a terrible year last year.

And that's just tournament fishing, nothing against them.

But, um, I'd say Christie, Cox, and Hackney.

And Brandon Cobb's really good, too.

Um, and then, yeah, that, that is just as far as just shallow guys.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

If you got a, you got a side channel that's eight foot all the way through it and then it rises up to two foot, all that water's getting pushed into that...

You know, can, like, lots of...

Unless you have a ton of current and you're trying to get away from it, um, which usually isn't the case most time in the summer, like, you're looking for current.

So that same scenario where you have a wide s- stretch that narrows down, creates more current, you get the same effect out of something shallowing up, and I think that's something people overlook a lot.

So I, I kind of like those areas that have some depth that the fish can use if they want to, but it, they seem like they really like to feed in those, like, shallower areas of those stretches just 'cause it, you know, it pushes everything, condenses it down, you know?

And one that's a crazy thing to me for you guys over there, uh, especially, but, you know, when you do have those conditions, are you trying to focus on finding deeper water, or how do you play it when the water's low?

Well, I mean, it's still going back to current.

You know, how, how do you, how do you handle that, going to a body of water where you've got a lot of good memories, um, but you don't necessarily want to hit the same spots?

Yeah, no, I, I intentionally didn't fish anything I've fished before in the past, um, which might have been a mistake, 'cause some of those...

I seen some, after watching the tournament afterwards, I seen some guys catch from out some places where I've caught them before.

So that might have been a mistake.

But I just figured with the, with the no-scope tournament and large mouth getting probably more pressure than they normally get there when you can scope that, uh, you know, these guys do their homework.

They all watch the past tournaments and stuff like that.

I was expecting, you know, places I caught them in the past to be pretty crowded.

'Cause it wasn't, like, a super finesse-y type drop shot, but it was a drop shot nonetheless.

was so was it harder than you thought it would be or did you think it was going to be

i was i was still really green um i think it was my biggest problem it definitely seemed very hard uh looking back now obviously hindsight's 2020 but i was just so unexperienced uh you know we fished We fished like three tidal rivers, which is like my biggest, was my biggest weakness my first year, you know.

And then a ledge tournament.

I'd never done that before.

I mean, just everything.

I mean, aside from Havasu kind of set up okay because I was catching smallies there and then St. Lawrence and then everything else was just like, out of my wheelhouse.

What very little wheelhouse I had back then, which was just, you know, flipping grass and catching shallow smallmouths.

Oh, yeah.

Like even Trey McKinney and some of these guys, I mean, how-

Yeah.

It, it...

Well, Trey McKinney's a different, but for the majority of the young guys coming into the sport, you know, uh, that college fishing really, really tuned them up for, um, to fish on a national level.

Like before, you'd have your guy, wherever he was from, a little region, Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Ozarks, or Florida or Carolinas, wherever he was from, you know.

He knew that kind of fishing fairly well, and then when he tried to reach out, you know, move up and do regional stuff and, um, you know, you take a guy from the Carolinas and put him in Florida or vice versa, there, there's a bit of a learning curve there.

But with the kids, you know, obviously it starts with the high school programs, and that leads them into the college fishing.

Just spread out