> I did my normal shad spawn bait rotation and caught an 8-lber on my first cast with the jerkbait.

> “The fish were so shallow…on Live it seemed like I was constantly adjusting my bait, but I was was scraping mud off the bill with my finger. I think the plowing the bottom thing actually made the fish bite it better. Kind of the same concept of a diving crankbait in 6-8′ water.

> “…basically no pauses and not really ever reeling it. My retrieve was really fast and all jerks, no pauses. I was keeping it moving the whole time. I never even really felt them bite it — I’d just go to jerk and they’d be there.”

> “I’m not the only one who was doing what I was doing — it’s not like I had the magic pattern. I really think the key to my success last week was timing…starting to understand the timing.”

> “The only way to answer that question is just things haven’t gone right on final days [til now]. And this year, I think it’s momentum man. I’ve just made the correct decisions on final days.

> “I’ve been in position [to win] so many times over the years, and this year I’ve made the correct decisions on final days.”

> “Let me think about how to answer that…. Once you get a win or get in contention, you start building confidence to compete. Fishing is so such a mental game, people don’t realize it. I think it’s just a mental thing.

> “And this year a lot of tournaments have set up for me [his style of fishing]. The two wins and Lanier [14th], it’s the style of fishing I’m comfortable doing. I didn’t feel like I was learning as I was going this year.”

> “I really like Guntersville but I know nothing about OK — I just hope to have good finishes…. We’re getting out of tournaments I feel good about, where I feel like I’ve been able to catch them with my style of fishing. But at Lake Fork I didn’t think going in it would be [his style], but turned out I was real comfortable with it.”

> “I can’t think of what Doctor Doom is but Thanos is pretty bad a**.”

> “I think I’ll have to win at least 1 more before I get that invite.”

> “I’d start by burning the crankbait fast through the school to trigger a bite and get the fish fired up. Then I would switch to the swimbait to try and get a bigger bite.

> “All of my areas were 10-12′ hard-bottom areas in creeks the fish were staging on as they were heading back to the main lake after spawning.”

> “Very shallow on shad-spawn places…clay and rock.”

> “…a spinning rod but this is a heavy rod with plenty of power for landing big bass in open water. I could cast the weightless bait much farther and accurately on a spinning rod. A lot of the first-hour action [2-3′ flats on points, mostly clean] revolves around fish blowing up shad and casting to the explosions — FUN stuff. I was skipping the bait fast along the surface, making as much noise and commotion as I could with it.”

> “Later in the tournament I started using a 7” bait the same way and they liked that as well.

> “After the morning stuff I fished offshore the rest of the day and that was how I caught a lot of my big fish — 8-12′ points / ‘stick-outs along the bank. The fish weren’t loaded on these spots yet but they were coming, and when you hit a little flurry you were sure to put a couple of 5-6+ lbers in the boat.

> “I couldn’t catch anything good dragging on the bottom, which was odd — they wanted moving baits [big ones]: I saw some large tails sticking out the throats of some of these fish — gizzard shad, small white bass. The morning shad were actually mostly small.”

> “The whole idea of big fish being smarter than small fish just isn’t true – they’re just the fish that are the first to feed and eat the most,” he said. “Those fish haven’t been caught because they live in places too difficult to approach for most fishermen.”

> To prove his theory, Hannon has released many of the hundreds of 10-lb-plus fish he has caught in the 400-acre lake he lives on near Odessa. Those fish, which avoided capture for nearly a decade or more in their wild habitat, were caught again almost in a matter of days.

> “They had endured for 8 or 10 years in the wild with very heavy fishing pressure, yet in a small lake that is fished by only 3 or 4 fishermen they were caught within 3 weeks.” They hadn’t been able to find that impenetrable habitat in their new lake.

> Fishermen trying to find trophy fish must do more than just look for the densest vegetative “slop,” however. They’ve got to analyze each section of a lake or river, looking for the same characteristics that a bass seeks.

> Hannon has pared his list of preferences to 4 major characteristics: a place to feed, a place to escape, a place to spawn and a variety of vegetation throughout these areas.

> “Prime territory for a big bass must be close to a shallow flat. Because most of the food will be on that shallow, grassy flat.” Also important is a [nearby] deep-water refuge.

> Last on his list is a good plant mix. “The more variety, the better because each type of plant supports different types of organisms. The more organisms, the better the food chain.”