A Tip of the Hat

This article was written by club member Zach Patch. His unique voice and dedication to the sport of bass fishing are just a couple of the many reasons that he deserves recognition. Please share this article and check in regularly to peruse his scrawlins.

Humble Beginnings

I apologize in advance for the long read, but I could write a full length, 100-percent nonfiction novel about the last couple weeks of my life. I highly doubt 96.3-percent of the folks that read it would believe most of it, because the curve balls I've been swinging at recently have been insane. 

Fortunately, some of that has been fishing related, and I have a couple of stories to tell. Y'all will be seeing a fair amount of my flavor of nonsense in the coming days. I have to preface it all with a little personal history, so that it makes sense to folks that don't know me well, on the off chance that someone follows close enough.  

 Believe it or not, I didn't get serious into bass fishing until about four years ago when my cousin (whom I view as being more of a brother) invited me along for my first bass tournament. In the several years prior to this faithful day, life had sent us in differing directions. He was in the process of starting a family, and I was done with the art of trying to send myself to an early grave. My life was actually on a very promising trajectory, for the first time. Fishing had always been a huge part of my life, but up until that point, I was fully content throwing an Original Rapala, or heading to the lake with a bucket full of minnows.  

Out here, the possibilities are endless

To say that I couldn't have felt dumber at this frigid pre-spawn event on the Connecticut River would be a tremendous understatement. I had no idea what braided line was, or flipping and pitching, or pegging a sinker, and my top speed in a boat to that point was a blistering four miles-per-hour. That morning, when we were cruising upstream at 40-something mph, all I could think was: 

"I hope we can go back and pick up the pieces of my face that are freezing and falling off right now", and "WHAT IS THIS MADNESS THAT I’VE BEEN SLEEPING ON ALL THESE YEARS?!?!

Fact

Fortunately, I somehow thought to take a little video of a meaningless little boat ride that was immediately one of the most profound experiences of my adult life. I would have been just as well off that day if I had left my gear at home.Instead I sat dumbfounded as my cousin blew through beaver dams to get to the hard to reach places with the Tracker Grizzly he had then, and watched helplessly as he boat flipped big bass after big bass out of less than a foot of water using this pool cue lookin’ fishing rod made by some guy that I’d never heard of. I think he was named Larry Dobbins or Harry Dubbins, or Gary Dobyns. It was something like that anyway. 

What I witnessed that day, lit a fire under my arse, unlike anything ever had before. After that day, I swore off live bait for good because I needed to learn how to catch fish the way he did - like I knew how to speak fish and talk ‘em into biting even when they weren't hungry.  

It ain’t the biggest or fastest, but it gets me to where the fish are

Since then, it's been my mission, ehhh, more like obsession to learn every possible way to trick a bass into biting that there was. I learned drop-shotting, the ridiculous amount of types and ways to fish a jig, and most recently, cranking. It didn’t actually click for me until earlier this week, when I decided to go to Champlain and shut my phone off to get away from the nonsense. 

Putting my DC 735cb and DC 705cb glass rods on the deck of my boat, I dropped the trolling motor and turned on my phone just long enough to snap a couple of pics to prove I caught something - and then kept catching those frigid pre-spawning fish until dark.

The next day I got up early enough to drive three hours to Texas (just kidding, and you'll see what I'm joking about in a day or two) and the day after that, kicked off the tournament season for my cousin and I (I'll also be telling y'all that one too).

*I also learned recently, that my butt crack is becoming almost as notorious as my top hat, but that's a tale for another time. Guess I need to watch my videos frame by frame and get creative.