> Ott: “3-4 years ago Wheeler had a DT16 or 20 he gave me…said it’s a color he really catches them good on at times…. [Biggs painted some] that were exactly the same. It was good — it had some more blue in it than what we do now [more purple now].”

> Jacob: “It came from a [custom-painted] DT10 I’d been catching bass on since I was 16…very similar color to that.

> Ott: “[Biggs] painted up a whole bunch of them…. It had more purple. The second batch he did, he said, ‘I’m going to try something a little different, different paint I think will look really good.’ And it did. The other one was pretty, but this one was way better. …when I saw it, I said, ‘That’s the one.'”

> Jacob: “The key with the color is this: There’s times on offshore fish that a very loud color — blue/chartreuse, citrus shads — are really good in getting those fish to react and get fired up. But there’s also times where the more subtle colors get 4:1 in bites compared to the loud chartreuses.

> “So over the years, I realized that…hues are everything. The base colors — white, pearl, chartreuse, red — that’s the key.”

> Ott: “For me I’ve caught ’em on it from pretty clean water, like 3-4′ visibility, down to 1-1.5′ visibility — which for the color of the bait doesn’t make as much sense because I think it’s a natural color. To me the water clarity has a little to do with it, but in some ways it’s pressured fish or educated fish in general — it’s so much more natural of a color.”

> “The Great Lakes have a lot of natural currents that you can’t always see, but you just have to realize that it is there. Flats adjacent to a sharp break into deeper water will give the bass a place to move up and down to feed, and the break to the flat makes a wall for them to ambush forage.

> “The current will also be stronger in these areas as it changes from deeper to shallower water.”

> “In southern lakes you’ll catch an occasional one out deep ledge-fishing for largemouth. But often bluff walls are the key. They are still relating to current, and those bluff walls do the same thing with current (as flats on the Great Lakes) and help position the fish better.”

> Clay: “If that chine bites like it happened to us, you experience multiple G forces and you’re out of the boat in milliseconds.

> “I skidded 30 or 40 yards and found myself several feet underwater before the [Mustang] PFD inflated and I came popping up to the surface. And then I looked for the boat and was surprised to see the motor was still running and that the boat was still moving. That was when the revelation went off for me that this was a much worse situation than we just got blown out of the boat.”

> Blake: “It took me a year and a lot of encouragement from a lot of people to post that video because I was I was fearful of the negative feedback that I would get. I just hope that maybe there’s that one guy that reminds his young son to put that life jacket on or put that kill switch on because of this. And he can visually show his son or his friend or even himself that this could happen to anybody.”