> If I had to sum up Forrest with one word, it would be authentic. He was something you don’t see anymore. He brought out the good in the business that he was in, the industry he was in, and everything about him he tried to do the right way and be positive.

> One thing I’ll always remember is he always had a notepad with him. Anytime somebody mentioned something he needed to follow up on, whether it was to get somebody a hat or sign an autograph, as soon as they’d leave he’d write it down so he wouldn’t forget. He always did that, and it taught me a lot just about how to treat people. But that’s just how Forrest operated.

> I’ve never heard one person in 40 years say one bad thing about Forrest, and you can’t say that about many people. Everybody loved him, and he’s an icon. Wherever I went, all over the world — and I’ve been to Japan and all over — everybody knew who Forrest Wood was.

> …man, if we all could just live the life he got to for a little bit. I look at my dad and Forrest and they each lived a h*ll of a life. Everybody should hope that they get to do something like that. They touched a lot of people.

> In working with him, you didn’t work for Forrest — you worked with Forrest. He made sure it was that way. I never did know of him asking anybody to do anything that he hadn’t already done himself, especially in the boat-building business, from loading the chopper gun to moving boats to sweeping the floor. Everybody worked and did his best job, and he set the example for that.

> [On naming FLW:] …I called Forrest…and asked what he thought about it. He said that if FLW doesn’t work out we can always say it stands for “fish like water.”

> I was covering an Operation Bass tournament in Hawaii. They put about eight small Rangers on a ship and shipped them out there, and they had a tournament on Wahiawa. It’s by Pearl Harbor. I remember seeing guys flipping the edges of pineapple fields to catch bass…. …I was at Waikiki Beach one morning, and I actually saw Forrest on a surfboard. It wasn’t big giant waves — it was pretty modest. But I saw Forrest taking a surfing lesson, and my joke was that his hat never came off once.

> He took the lead on day 1 when he found a special 1-cast spot right near the 147 bridge — a 3′ high spot with little bit of sand and rock with hydrilla all around it right at the mouth of one of the best-known spawning creeks on Sam Rayburn.

> Unfortunately, after 11:00 Friday, he never caught another fish on the spot, forcing him to scramble and grind the final 2 days up in the shallows. …figures he hit more than 100 spots, just running around up shallow, fishing anything that looked good.

> “Laydowns, grass, a point coming out or something that looked really fishy, I’d just swing in and burn it quick…no fish came off the same thing.”

> His primary weapons were 5 crankbaits, including [2.75″] Poe’s 300 and 400 Series deep-divers, a Poe’s 400 Plus [weighed wooden deep-diver], a modified 400 Plus (to dive even deeper), and a shallow running flat-sided crankbait made by a friend. All the Poe’s lures were chartreuse and blue.

> …precision casting to a special group of places he pinpointed with his depthfinder. These were usually…things like individual rocks, logs or even tiny channel beds that are easily missed. Rarely were his key targets as large as a boat.

> It took me 5 to 7 years before I even caught a bass on something besides a crankbait.

> A guy in our club kind of took me under his wing; his name was John Wayne Leonard. He’s passed away on us, he’s been gone 5 or 6 years, but he was probably the best fisherman in our club. He liked to structure-fish, he liked to fish away from the bank, and I’d never done that.

> He showed me, with the old flashers and stuff, how to find those spots and fish ’em. I really liked doing it, and it’s probably because of him that I developed my skills in that area.

> You couldn’t see what you were throwing at, but when you caught one fish you usually could catch four or five, because they hadn’t been fished for very much. I saw right quick that was what I wanted to do, was get away from the bank and fish. He was very instrumental in me learning how to do that.

> Michigan State University researchers…demonstrated that anglers can produce accurate and complex environmental models similar to those of trained scientists. [Are there UNtrained scientists??]

> The study…shows that fisheries stakeholders can accurately predict pike populations, predator abundance, habitat and fishing pressure. “This is a novel and potentially revolutionary way to estimate the status of the environment.”