The Baron

He is, but he’s a darn sight smaller than my 6’3” / 240# self. Which is why my fish look a lot better when he holds them. 😁

Your 😝 I guess I’m just seeing things. I know he doesn’t fish like Brandon. lol

I don’t know what my PB smallmouth is, none over 5# yet so I’m not keeping track. My son caught a 5# 7oz. so I won’t weigh in officially until I’m winning. lol My PB largemouth (5.35#) was caught on an Owner Flashy Swimmer with a white 4” XZone Swammer. Best pic I have of my PB is with my buddy holding it. Tell me my buddy doesn’t look like Brandon Palaniuk!

Senkos for me, Yum Dingers for the kids. 🫢

Dang, that hurts.🙁 Congratulations on the catch. Sorry to hear the quick release.

Holy moly! Happy birthday, indeed! 👍🏻😎👍🏻

Be careful @AlabamaSpothunter… I have a truck, and I know how to use it! 😁

It’s even worse than that - 3rd Saturday in June, so this year that’s June 21st. Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River is even worse. After it closes May 10, largemouth opens June 21st but smallmouth not until July 5th. 🙁 That only leaves about 4 months of fishing. I’m seriously trying to figure out when and how I can get myself south for a month or two each year. I’m about done with winter.

Really nice markings on that one. 😎

Yes, when I see tournament fisherman down south pulling bass right off their beds it confuses me. We have to wait until the 3rd Saturday in June to fish bass, and it will be too cold to fish by early November which makes our season extremely short. ☹️ Here's a few of the boat. Wes and I talked many times last year about how awesome it will be when we get a 19ft. aluminum - our dream boat. It's a blessing to be able to make the dream a reality so soon. Just look at the size of that front deck.😍 This boat will open up much more opportunity to chase monster smallmouth on Lake Ontario. Only weird thing is my wife said she wanted a bigger deck this year, but now that we have it she doesn't seem happy.🤷‍♂️

We're getting a nasty freezing rain storm here. Started last night and the radar looks very bad, for the next 24 hours. The biggest fishing show in Ontario (probably in Canada) is tomorrow, I was excited to go but it's two hours away and it doesn't look like the roads will be safe at all. I'm beyond angry at the weather right now.

Nice one! I dream of a 7lb. some day. 😎 I don’t have any kayak experience, but I’ve fished out of a canoe a lot. Hooksets are definitely a challenge. As is working a frog or jerkbait.

Randy B. did a YouTube video on the Classic having very low attendance. It did, likely for several contributing reasons but of course he blamed it on claims that watching people fish with FFS is boring. Like watching other people fish was ever not boring? 🤷🏼‍♂️

No doubt that Easton Fothergill’s story is one of overcoming adversity. From emergency brain surgery to winning a Collegiate, then two open wins and to the Elites. Then show up and dominate the Classic. No one could say that young man won only because of FFS. I don’t really know what happened with the Johnston bothers last year. But sad to think they aren’t good ambassadors from Canada. I’d like to think we have a reputation to uphold, of being good folks.

Amazing to see the win go to a 22yo. and 2nd place to a 19yo. That’s the reality of FFS, but it feels somewhat wrong to me that the Super Bowl of bass fishing is won by guys with so little experience and of (until now) relatively unknown names. To ask a 19yo about how long he’s been dreaming of the BM Classic trophy seems weird when there’s guys who could say they’ve dreamt of it 20+ years. I think it might even be dangerous for Bass Masters to make it so easy for newbies to dominate, in that folks might stop caring about the Classic if it looks like a battle for rookie of the year with no “fan favorites” competing. Not taking anything away from the young guys, it’s just my personal thought on things. And completely unrelated… I noticed Cory Johnston was the only one of the super six who didn’t detour to shake Trey McKinney’s hand on his way off stage. I thought that was a disappointing lack of sportsmanship from the only Canadian we had left in the race. 👎🏻