A quick glance at last year's pattern of posts to Fishing With Dummies reveals that both the fishing and posting cooled as the water warmed. Rather than accept a 3 month season three members of the FWD team ventured out to Worcester to spend $50 of our hard earned money on the ASA's (whatever that is) Bass Fishing Academy.Here's how it went down: 5 sessions were offered over 5+ hours of Friday afternoon. The $50 buys you a weekend pass to the fishing expo. The speakers were a mix of local pros and apparently national figures. Probably about 50% useful tips, 30% war stories, 10% gratuitous product plugging, 10% people asking stupid questions in hopes of either inflating their heros' egos or getting free stuff tossed to them.
Broken down by speaker:
Gene "The Machine" Ellison - Clearly an experienced teacher. Ran a great show and I probably took 2 pages of notes during his talk. He walked a fine line between a very useful tutorial on sonar and Humminbird infomercial. Either way, it worked. I learned a ton from him and I look forward to buying electronics worth more than the Worm. Plus, he's from Sommerville MA.
Zell Rowland - I'm new to the sport but it was cool to meet a legend. He's sort of a cross between Tommy Lee Jones & Ron Burgandy ("I'm kind of a big deal"). I would have preferred more tips on fishing, particularly his specialty which I gather is top water. Ends the talk with three pretty cool Zell tricks. Not sure if it would be rude to share them after The Machine asked us nicely not to spread the content around on the internet.
Danny Correira - The networks are missing out on this guy. After watching dozens of fishing shows filmed down south and trying to apply it here, I have a real appreciation for local knowledge. Plus he's just way out there. He's the pot brownie opposite of Charlie Moore's 8 ball act. It was probably not a bad thing having The Machine steer him from time to time and asking good follow up questions. His point about green plastics, yellow swim baits, cranks in NE lakes all makes sense. Definitely buying at least 1 of everything he showed (except swim baits). Would love to fish with that guy.
Mark Zona - Zona's the Animal House Bluto of the fishing world. He basically took the guitar out of Danny's hands and smashed it into both walls before giving the Pearl Harbor speech about flipping tubes. Unfortunately, in 1 hour I took three notes. Clearly some people were there to meet the stars and connect with them personally and I can appreciate that. But as a student attending an "academy" I would have preferred more content. Tommy didn't see it that way. Said he was feeling it was all technical before Zona and his talk was a nice jolt to the seminar.
Steve and Joe Lucarelli -My favorite session and these guys aren't even on the bill. Local knowledge, straight shooting father son combo. The fact that I have had some (my only) success with the senko makes me eager to try the drop shot methods they showed. Videos were great too. One criticism; they started their session by offering a pack of $8 yamasenkos to whoever asked a question. It opened the flood gates and led to a somewhat disjoint session but still dotted with great tips.
Not sure if I'll do it again but it was well worth the trip. My 2011 shopping list was very much influenced by the day and I look forward to reporting back on the lessons learned.
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