Hi again, yes its still me, Mike The BassnMan. Pull up a chair and stay awhile. I hope you enjoy my site. First off, I am not a professional fisherman, I’m just a fisherman with a huge passion for bass fishing and have acquired several sponsors whose products I really believe in. I feel that I am one of the fortunate fishermen because I have a very understanding wife that may not understand my obsession with fishing but she accepts it. As a matter of fact we purchased a 4 bedroom house just so I would have my own room for all of my fishing stuff.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are fishing with my Dad, he has since passed onto a better place. I sure do miss him and think about him often, especially when I’m fishing. I give him all the credit for my passion for this wonderful sport. No matter how busy he was, working 2 jobs to put food on the table for our family of 6, he always made time to take me fishing. He got me hooked on fishing which kept me off of drugs. I believe that he enjoyed fishing as much as I do. He passed on at a young age, before I really got to know him as a person instead of just as dad. I would love nothing more than to be able to go fishing with him one last time.
I grew up in Arizona where dad and I fished the many of the clear water Arizona lakes, mainly for bass. We were not a very rich family so we would generally just fish from shore. Then there were the special times when we would rent an aluminum boat with a 10hp motor or a canoe with a little trolling motor. The funny thing was, we always caught fish, even without all the latest gadgets at our disposal.
It was there that I “cut my teeth” on clear water, light line bass fishing. When I was 18 we moved to Southern California where the light line bass fishing lessons I learned in Arizona really helped me with the finicky, high pressured bass waters here in California. A couple of my favorite lakes to fish are Lake Isabella and Lake Perris.
While I’ve fished in several different west coast tournaments organizations and won more money than I had invested, I never fished the big circuits like BASS or FLW. I can say that I have fished against some of the best West Coast bass fishermen that now fish the Big Time Major Tournament circuit’s. At times I would finish ahead of them and other times they would finish ahead of me. Currently I don’t fish quite as many tournaments as I once did but I still fish a few from time to time, especially if I’m on a great bite while out pleasure fishing.
My boat is a fully loaded 2008 Black/White with Orange trim Champion 210 SCX Elite with a Mercury Racing 250 Pro XS Opti-Max. The electronics are 2 Lowrance HDS 8’s with Structure Scan, one on the bow and one on the console. It has a 36 Volt 109 lb Motorguide Digital Tour Edition Trolling Motor all powered by 4 Optima Blue Top Group 31 Batteries.
I was the Southern California President of the FishingKids.com Pro Team which was a non profit charity organization where we fished on behalf of disabled and needy children as well as introducing them to the wonderful sport of bass fishing. Even though the organization no longer exists I still enjoy taking kids out and introducing them to the great sport we call fishing.
I generally tend to “Target” big bass, which does produce fewer bites but much larger bass and have been throwing the big swimbaits long before they became popular, back to the original AC Plugs, so yes, its been awhile. To date I have caught, weighed and released over 125 bass that have weighed over 10 pounds with the heaviest weighing 15.7 pounds, which I caught on a BIG Mann’s Jelly Worm back in the early 80’s. I’ve had bigger ones on that I’ve had to the side of the boat but for one reason or another was unable to boat them and they just don’t count unless you touch them. Oh, I forgot to mention, I did manage to catch a 130 pound bass, I’ll go into more detail about that later.
I also had a bass fishing guide service for a few years that was profitable but it kind of took the joy out of fishing because as the guide I would not fish as much so the clients could catch them. I also firmly believe in catch and release with any bass over 10 pounds. I would always have a Scale, Camera and tape measure to document the catches. It is a fact that now days if you pick the right taxidermist/artist you cant tell the difference between a skin mount and a fiberglass one. Even though I explained up front my rules about Catch and Release, at times it still created issues. I still to this day ALWAYS carry a camera, scale and tape measure.
On April 2003 I had the honor of taking the NASCAR 2002 Raybestos Rookie of the year, driver of the number 12 AllTell Dodge, Ford at the time, Ryan The Rocket Man Newman out for a day of bass fishing on Lake Perris. That’s him standing next to me in two of the pictures in my logo above. I got the Pro Team together and we took his whole crew out. I originally was supposed to take Ryan and Krissie his girl friend at the time and now his wife, but Krissie couldn’t make it so I took Ryan and Matt Borland, his crew chief at the time, out in my boat. Ryan is a great down to earth guy, we joked all day and had a blast, again, I’ll go into more detail later.
Thanks again for visiting and please feel free to leave me comments and suggestions and I’ll do my best to respond to you. I’m looking forward to sharing my tips and stories with you. As well as learning some new tips and strategies from you.
Until Next Time Good Luck To Ya and Tight Lines!
