Was it better then than now? That’s really a tough question for me to answer. and a wild and crazy trip to Cuba in 1969 on “Red Carpet Airlines” in an old vintage DC-3, which is a book just waiting to be written in itself was the final act and I’ve been hooked ever since… There was no way I could ever recover from that experience, so I soon convinced my better half I just had to have a new stick steer 40 HP Bass Boat with a new secret invention painted camouflage green with a red flashing disc called a fish locator and after reading everything Buck Perry had ever written at least a dozen times that I could practically quote verbatim from memory started me on my way to my Bass Angling Odyssey of a lifetime and the thousands of mostly wonderful memories that I have had while chasing jaws…Ī trip to Florida with my first double digit bass and drifting “CRÈME” worms on the humps at Lake T with Mike C. I vividly recall my first time tubing on a chilly late March morning using a Mitchell 300 spinning reel while fishing a weightless plastic “Dad Nabber” along a milfoil edge and I caught my first 7 pounder along with 3 more over 4 pounds. Incurable and insatiable “Bass Fever” hooked me in the early 60’s when I first began walking the banks of some of our local farm ponds and from there it wasn’t long before I had graduated to a new fangled Fish-Master Float Tube that actually put you in the water with the fish and it was off to Bass Fishing Heaven for me. Re: Question for some of the guys that fished in the late 60's-70's I was kind of a big deal back then.īrutha you got one hell of memory, Your poor wife!! The athletic director for the Garland schools paid to have it mounted for me. We walked away with trophies for Heavy Stringer and Big Bass. Ray Sasser wrote an article in the sports section of the Dallas Morning News about my fish and our school winning the event. It was the biggest bass any of us had ever seen in person! It was the only fish I landed that day but it didn't matter. Dickson and I show up with a 7 pound 7 ounce lunker that dropped everyone's jaws. I think Paul Redmond landed one small keeper about a pound. Stories of the big one that broke their line circulated around at weigh in.Īt the end of the day, Kirk Balsley had landed two nice 2.5-3 pound fish on a blue Fliptail worm off some old submerged RR tracks in deep water and put us in the lead. I think Lakeview blanked but North Garland brought three or four keepers to the scales for about four pounds. We blasted off across Hubbard in search of the elusive largemouth bass. They were the rich kids from the South Side.Ĭoach Gary Reeves from Garland High (now the superintendant for GISD) did the shotgun start at safe light from the gas dock at Point Royal Marina off Hiway 66. Lakeview Centennial was there with a few guys. North Garland was there with their formidable team as was South Garland.
Gary Hughes and Paul Redmond rounded out our six man team. It was me and my partner Dickson Ayers in his boat. It was the Top Six from each school that day on Hubbard. I was a sophomore at Garland High and we had organized a high-school bass club for all the Garland schools. It was more of a ski boat than a bass rig but it floated and we thought we were hot stuff flying across the lake at a blistering 32 mph!
We just idled around and either tied up or anchored. We were fishing out of my buddy's 14' MonArk with a 35 Evinrude with no TM on front. We didn't have any Uncle Josh pork rind so I stuck the Mr.
I had no idea how to fish a jig but it was winter time and the books I read said to fish a jig & eel in the winter. It was a black bucktail 3/8 oz Stan Sloan Booza Bug jig with a fiber weedguard. I had my red Garcia Ambassaduer 5000-B on my 5.5' Lew's Speed Stick with 14# Stren fluorescent blue line. I caught my first "biggun" 7 lbs 7 oz in a tournament on Ray Hubbard on 1-25-75. I enjoy teaching more now than I do actually catching.