I hear fat ladies!!!!!!

Finally time for a long nap, it’s all over and I couldn’t be more ready. Unfortunately, this is actually a busy time of the year too, renewing contracts, ordering the new boat, selling the old boat, getting vehicle wraps figured out, designing jerseys and putting year end reports together…uhg! But it’s part of the job and at least I’m home now with my family until the beginning of January. What a unusually busy year.

I set three new personal records on this last trip that I hope will never be broken: First… this was the longest I had ever been away from Mitchell and Macy since they were born. 2. This was the longest one way drive I’ve ever made, 30 hours, and finally, 3. The place where I stayed in Zapata was the absolute scariest place I’ve ever been. I’d like to dwell on this for a minute if I may…there were huge cockroaches, spiders everywhere, long orange bugs with pincers on their butts, we had no shower (for the last three days), the place flooded twice while we were there (inches deep), the bathroom was full of mold and smelled worse than I could ever describe, Art Ferguson was rooming with me (just kidding), and to top it all off, one night Art (while holding his breath) went into the bathroom and almost stepped on a scorpion! We took some pictures of it, named him Steve, and then flushed him without remorse. I guess the poor little killer bug couldn’t take the bleach and anti-bacterial assault we waged on the bathroom a few minutes earlier. I almost forgot to mention my sleeping arrangement. I slept on a 4 foot love seat and pulled a chair up next to it to put my feet on…it was awesome!!!!

As far as the fishing on Falcon, I was so excited for that event to start I could hardly sleep the night before. I found a spot that I thought was going to be “Hackney-esk” on the evening before our official day-off that had some huge fish on it. I spent most of my practice time out in deep water and found a few places I thought had some potential, but as soon as I idled over this spot and my Vexilar lit up like a Christmas tree, I really got excited. I got even more fired up when I cast back into my path and caught a 10 lber before the bait even got to the bottom. It was getting dark and I had a 30 minute run back to Zapata, so I idled around the area and tried to figure it out somewhat at least in the couple minutes I had. I made another cast on the other side of it and caught another giant fish around 8 lbs. I couldn’t believe it!

Needless to say, that spot didn’t pan out. I had no company there, but all I could catch was 3 lbers???? There must have been hundreds of them down there, why no toads I’ll never understand. I had two other places that produced big fish for me in practice, but they both had other fishermen on them. One of them was the very first place I found out deep, where I caught a 7 1/2 and a 6lber. Up until that point I was only catching smaller fish flipping bushes which were mostly under 4 pounds. Art and I had been talking throughout practice since we were not competing against each other in the tournament, so when I found that deep spot I described it to him so he could look for areas like it. Wouldn’t you know he found the exact same spot. I couldn’t believe it, I mean what are the odds on such a big lake? I honestly had a sinking feeling about the whole event because of that alone, but I was still excited about the possibilities of my last find. Art caught a huge sack from that spot on day 3 and made the Cup for 09. The good thing is that the guy I fished against really caught them and I probably wouldn’t have beat him even if I had that spot to myself anyway.

Sometimes things just don’t work out and you really don’t know why, and this was one of those events. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I was so far out of it on the last day that I threw a huge swimbait for 8 hours. I caught a ton of fish on it, but they were all small, go figure. I had a good run in the last 8 tournaments or so and I guess I was simply due for a bad one…oh well. I would have loved to pre-qualify for the Forrest Wood Cup in Pittsburgh next year, but at the same time if you asked me…”If you had to pick one way to qualify for the Cup from the three, which would it be?”…I’d definitely pick the FLW Tour. So that’s the way I’m looking at it and I’m excited to start the year fresh in 2009. And I’m also glad to see the East/West Fish-off go bye bye, I never liked it. Especially last year when David Walker won the AOY in the Series and got beat in the fish-off by Bobby Barrack, not cool. I think consistency needs to be rewarded over luck, which is how it will work next season in the Series. I applaud FLW for changing it.

There are a couple new things to mention in the tackle world, first is the prototype worm I was using in Texas. It’s yet another killer bait from Gary Yamamoto called the 10 inch cut tail worm. Wait until you see that thing, it’s like the perfect big worm. It will be available soon I think. And the Tabu Whip Tails are being sold now too. We will also begin selling direct from the Tabutackle.com website in the near future on a prepay basis. We had a great debut year and I thank those of you who helped make it happen. Tabu will continue to introduce new products as we grow to help you catch more fish, and believe me, we’ve got some exciting things in the works for 2009.

Now, I’m getting ready for one of my favorite things in the whole world…ice-fishing! We have 4 feet of snow right now and it’s coming down as I’m typing this. I love snow and can’t wait to get out on the ice with Mitchy. We need the weather to stay cold and we could be drilling holes in a week or two. I’ll keep you posted.

That does it for me. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and have a Merry Christmas.

Dave