My older brother Jordan and I are friends who talk every day because of fishing. It is plain and simple. When we were young, my mom or my dad would take us most weekends. We have both wanted to fish professionally most of our lives. The first Bassmaster television show we watched 20 years ago hooked us and has helped keep us together since.
This next year will be a big year for us, as we both get to pursue our dreams of fishing professionally. I will be fishing the Bassmaster Elite Series and Jordan will be fishing the FLW Tour. We love preparing for tournaments together, so we will fish the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Southern Opens as well.
I actually just got back from a trip to the nation’s capital for four days. I met Jordan in D.C. to fish the Potomac River for a few days. It was a great learning experience, as it was our first time at a tidal fishery. We were pre-practicing for one of his tournaments next year. We had a great time and found some really good areas that will hopefully be good next year.
We camped in a tent and pretty much roughed it. We forgot to bring towels and shower stuff, so we didn’t shower the entire trip. We had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch; and canned potatoes, black-eyed peas and soup were dinner. Oh, and we didn’t bring enough blankets and froze at night. A pretty typical camping trip, really.
I went to a library to try to write this blog entry, but a lady at the computer next to me was watching YouTube videos and the time limit was only an hour. Needless to say, that didn’t go over so well. There will likely be no camping next year. Hotel Wi-Fi will be a must.
Jordan and I don’t get to fish together that much anymore now that he lives in North Carolina, so it was really good to get to practice with him the last few days. We talked about next year, and started talking about our game plans. In some ways, it felt like we were kids again talking about the next team tournament we were going to fish.
I think we had a great game plan this week. We fished a little but mostly explored. We got to see most of the areas on the Potomac and got a great feel for what each area had to offer. Since his tournament will be in May, we went through each creek and slough checking water depth and bottom hardness, probably the two most important factors when fishing around the spawn.
Even though all those hours of idling and running up and down the river were necessary, it did get a little boring. I was fighting the desire to flip a jig into every piece of cover I saw, so I had to spice it up a little. I continually tried to see how much mud I could get on the end of Jordan’s flipping stick as I stuck it in the mucky bottom of the backwater areas. He wanted me to check bottom hardness, so that is what I did. Ha.
He finally started trying to act like the older brother and jerked the rod out of my hand. It wouldn’t be a fishing trip with my brother without some sort of brotherly love going down. And we are still on speaking terms (daily).
Ok, so in a lot of ways, not much has changed since we were kids … except for the size of the tournaments.
Remember to chase your dreams!
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