Sorry I haven’t written in so long, I’ve just been incredibly busy so far this year. We just returned home for 6 days before things really start to heat up for the next 5 weeks. I went out fishing yesterday on Presque Isle Bay and caught 15 bass on the old Countdown. It was cold, water temp only 40, but it was fun as always. We still had snow on the ground yesterday…crazy! The evening before, Mitchell and I went down to Union City Reservoir by my house and brought back 10 big crappies, which we ate for dinner last night. There’s nothing better than fresh crappies, just ask Smiley!

Anyway, I haven’t exactly had a great start to the FLW Tour season. I sit in 62nd place after 2 events and basically need top 50′s the rest of the way to qualify for the Forrest Wood Cup in Pittsburgh later this summer, which is my primary goal for 09. I’m really not worried about anything else at this point; I just have to keep the wheels attached for 4 more events. Sounds easy, but trust me, I worry about it every second of every day. I can’t imagine missing this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Tabu Tackle is still going strong. After going over the numbers from 2008, we found that we had exceeded our expectations for our first year and our new products and goals for 2009 are right on track. I hope you all get a chance to try the new Whip Tails, they are the perfect drop shot bait. Our heavy cover jigs should be out this summer sometime. I will soon be opening up a Sloar Bat store here on the website, featuring the entire Solar Bat lineup. There’s really nothing else new to report on the industry side at the moment, everything still seems to going strong with all my sponsors at least, which is good.

I just finished up the FLW Table Rock event last week and am now getting ready to head down to Lake Eufaula for the 2^nd FLW Series tournament, followed by a PAA event on Neely Henry. The “signed jersey give a way contest” is still going on unfortunately (ha ha), and there are several of you who picked “4 events” to reach $1 BLK_PAA. Hopefully I can pull that off at Eufaula next week. I’ve been there once in 2003 when I fished the Bassmaster Tour and I remember liking it. I think I finished around 60^th. I remember only having four fish one of the days and making an insane 50 mile run to fish a single stump on a flat up the river. It was like 1:00 and my check in was 3:00, but I caught that sucker and made it back to weigh-in. That memory was in my mind at Table Rock on day 2 last week, when I did about the same thing, but it didn’t work that time…oh well?

Here's a meaningless, random, bonus shot of our neighbor, Glen Browne at Andrew's Landing on Table Rock Lake

I’ve never been to Neely Henry, I don’t even know if I’m spelling it right, and I’ve never even heard a thing about it. As soon as I’m done writing here I’ll start researching that place a little. I’m in 11^th in the PAA standings, and I hope to stay in contention for the PAA AOY going into the third and final event, which would be cool. I really like going to these low-land reservoirs as apposed to the deep, clear, rocky crap holes though…sorry. I just like kicking up mud with my trolling motor I guess.

Lake Norman is our 3^rd FLW Tour event and that takes place after Neely Henry. It should be a spawning deal and I think I’ll do well there. I’ve been there 2 times and have really started to get it figured out. Last year I just wouldn’t put the swimbait down, this year that won’t happen.

As you can imagine, I was a tad flustered with my 40^th place at the Rock, but looking back, I thank God for keeping me in the top 50. Sometimes I guess we get what we need, not exactly what we want. The weight’s dropped dramatically on day two and I never thought I had enough weight to get a big check, so I’m thankful for that. God is so good!!! You can listen to my audio recap from Table Rock by clicking here.

The coolest thing I did while in Branson, Mo was that I got to take Shoji Tabuchi , the famous violin player fishing. He then later attempted to teach me to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the violin, which was atrocious to say the least.  Remember, I only weighed in 4 on day two?…well Soji caught a 6 1/2 pounder in the same place I started every morning. With that darn fish I would have made the cut with room to spare. It brought back bitter memories from the first event at Guntersville, when I took Ott DeFoe to my area after the tournament and caught a 7 pounder and two 4 pounders! What is up with that? My and Shoji’s venture will be featured on the FLW Outdoors TV show from Table Rock. Hopefully they don’t make me look too stupid playing nursery rymes with a tiny, sparkling red vest. I felt like Chris Farley…”Fat guy in a little coat!” It could really be bad, ha ha ha.

Finally, my family and I are looking forward to hitting the road again. We will be pulling out on Wednesday morning and practice starts on Friday. So, I will talk back at you later!

Dave