What up! Please give ya a warm welcome to Minn Kota and Humminbird! More on that in upcoming issues, but glad they dig the Blaster and all of you!

Quick deal on living in the South for a month, more coming in a future BB. As always just my 2c:

1. I've spent a lot of time in the South (duh) but just a few days at a time. This was way different.

2. Life there is WAY easier – mentally – than it is in the Northeast. It's so different that it literally hit me that NJ is a mission field. Everyone in FL is more chill and there's a lot more Christian folks too which was great. Folks are grounded.

3. I fished just as little there (thank you again to all who offered to take me for a boat ride) and worked just as much. Obviously the problem is me. Gonna change that this year!

4. Living warm in the winter and seeing palm trees every day is pretty great. I know some folks like snow, I'm just not one of 'em. But I did make quite a few $$ back in the day shoveling!

5. I'm biased, but I really believe that if there were super-lucrative salty tournaments and bass fishermen really focused on catching those fish, they would clean up. We think about fishing differently.

6. The wife and I came back fired up to move. We're "purging" (her word for getting rid of stuff), gonna get the house on the market this spring, and we're out as soon as we're able.

7. She's only into the Charleston, SC area or the East Coast of FL. We'll see. Right now seems like people from literally all over the country have driven Southeast coast real estate prices up to irrationality. People in that biz we talked to expect prices to drop significantly at some point – everyone is wondering when the other shoe or boot will drop.

8. Still blows my mind how people are dropping multi-millions on houses everywhere. Couple theories I heard that made sense to me are: Folks are taking their $$$ outta stocks and whatever and sinking it into real estate – and since our gov't printed $4 trillion-ish dollars out of thin air, someone got all that $$$ and they're the ones buying pricey real estate. Could be...?

Happy Bassin' New Year, hope it'll be a feesh-filled one for you (and me), let's go!

Is Jacob in the process of inheriting "the greatest" of his era title from Kevin VanDam? Lotsa folks think so, and for sure it's been RARE for Jacob to finish outta the top 10! 🤯 Sounds like a good dude to check in with before the pro season kicks off. Here we go:

1. What did you work on in the offseason? How are you trying to improve your game?

> "To be honest with you, I've really just worked on a family and life fishing balance. I think that's the biggest thing that as you have a growing family, you try to juggle things – and as the kids get older you see how important those years are. So I'm trying to spend more time with them when I'm home, and also be more on top of my time management when I'm working.

> "So the short answer is time management and working on how to do the family/work balance."

Follow-up: I assume that doesn't mean you're not working on specific fishing techniques or whatever?

> "It definitely doesn't mean that. Always...a few new lures coming with CrushCity and other stuff I'm working on behind the scenes...always [working].

> "It's a lot easier to work hard and stay toward the top than it is to fall down toward the bottom and try to work my way back up. So I'm not complacent. Of course I'm still working on my craft and have to. That's just part of it."

2. Is your electronics setup different this year?

> "No it's actually like the exact same...ended up putting on the electronics setup as last year.

> "I go back and forth whether a 16-inch screen matters or not up front for ActiveTarget. I feel like sometimes I get a bigger glare with a bigger screen...sometimes that's just perception. ...people see big screens and...think it's the end all and be all. For me, I'm just figuring it out.

> "It worked just fine for me last year, so I'll just roll with that."

Foller-up: Can you run down your setup?

> "I'm running [Lowrance] ActiveTarget 2 on the bow [and] running 360 [plus a Lowrance] HDS 12 Pro on the bottom right for mapping, 2D and side scan. Up top I have an HDS 16 Pro that's for just ActiveTarget – a big screen dedicated to that. The bottom left is [Humminbird] 360 and Lakemaster [mapping] on a [Humminbird] Helix 12. I'm using that new [Minn Kota Ultrex] Quest trolling motor.

> "On the console I'm using an HDS 12 on the right, an HDS 16 on the left and then [Humminbird unit] just for mapping. I don't have any transducers connected to the Humminbird in the back – it's just for mapping."

3. [Rapala's] Dan Quinn said 5 more CrushCity baits are coming out this year. Were these easier or harder to do than the first 5?

> "I would say they were easier because you understand the nuances. ...we as a team at Rapala, I know the engineers well, we get on calls weekly to discuss things, it's easier to explain things. It's also more familiarization with the product – understanding what 10% salt looks like, the consistency of the plastic, just a lot of nuances you have to understand. Now I'm like, 'I want this this this and this,' and it's a lot easer to get to the end result.

> "I've actually limited the number of baits that I use since doing the product development stuff. Because now I know why they work.

> "...beforehand I would take a bait, say like a flipping bait, and I was thinking it was doing something [underwater]. After spending time [looking at baits] in my pool, I was thinking a bait was doing something but it actually was doing something else. I'm not saying my bait selection is small, but it's less than it was."

Bonus Q: Is there a target in your shop with Matt Becker's face on it? 😁

> "[Laughs] No man, look – Matt crushed it last year, no doubt. I take defeat as motivation. [Winning and getting close] drives you to work that much harder. No doubt man, he reeled 'em in."

Daaaaaaaang! ONE of those dudes caught it – U of LA-Monroe bassin' team member Connor Nimrod (in the middle ^), all during a Dec 16 tourney at Caney. Deets from LA Sportsman:

> ...2 smallish high spots [in 12-13' with bait] with hard areas...fished them with crankbaits to catch and cull 15-20 bass, all over 3 lbs, to build his limit to 42.10 lbs...mostly used a Bomber Fat Free Shad BD5....

> ...1 hump had 15 fish and another about 20. The Bomber crankbait color that triggered more strikes in practice and the tournament was ['foxy shad'].... He'd also rotate other shad-colored Bombers.

In the #SeaFoamWorks Top 5 in Bass Fishing, Episode 75:

1. Enforce the rules! 👮‍♂️

2. Get rid of entry fees 🆓

3. 2 FFS classes 1️⃣ 2️⃣

4. Don't go dark 🦨

5. Love and forgive ✝️

From an interesting scientific deal on In-Fisherman.com. See if it matches up with your experience:

> Fishery scientists at MS State U and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) used 21 years of fall electrofishing catches by TVA biologists in 10 main-stem reservoirs of the Tennessee River to assess habitat segregation of adult largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. Numerous randomly selected shoreline stations were sampled in each of the reservoirs.

> Largemouths selected aquatic plants and riprap habitat. Smallmouths and spotted bass selected rock and riprap, but avoided aquatic plants.

> Smallmouths avoided habitats that were predominantly sediment, and spotted bass avoided gravel habitat. All three species neither selected nor avoided brush habitat.

[Smallmouths and spots avoided plants, and spots don't like gravel? News to me!]

> ...no evidence of 1 species avoiding the other in 5 of the habitats. In the brush habitat, all species were more likely to occur together than predicted by chance. In other words, they tended to congregate.