Story by Hunter Baughman | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Another week and another crazy story from the road!
We headed out Friday morning with the intention of making it all the way to DeLand. Instead, we made it somewhere around the Alabama-Georgia line when the trip came to a stop. The transmission went out in my truck!
We were able to get off the freeway and pull into a car dealership parking lot of all places. They ran the codes on the truck, and I made some calls. The transmission was gone, and it would not be covered under warranty.
There we sat. All four of us and a boat. We were six hours from home and seven hours from DeLand. Andrea and I did some praying and talked through the next steps. Long story short, we ended up trading the truck in and buying a new truck at that dealership.
Let me tell you, it’s absolutely amazing how much stuff we had in that truck. Extra rods and reels, lots of extra baits, an extra trolling motor and lots of tools. All in all, we were at the dealership about 7 hours between buying the truck and switching everything over from the old truck. We rolled on down the road and ended up getting to the St John’s on Saturday.
Now let’s talk fishing. This river looks amazing … every inch of it. Yet it seems tough to generate bites. I just don’t think there is a large population of fish here. Big ones live here, though. We’ve seen that in previous tournaments over the years. I remember watching Rick Clunn catch two fish over nine pounds on his way to winning a BASS event here a few years ago.
There will definitely be lots of obstacles this week for the anglers. The water is currently about three feet high. I think that’s hurting things to an extent. It gives the fish a ton of cover to hide in that we can’t access. There’s lots of current right now, too. I really thought that would help the bite, but it doesn’t seem like it has. Plus, we’ve got some kind of tropical disturbance off the coast that looks be making landfall later in the week. I don’t believe it will actually hit us, but we’re going to see its effects during the tournament — rain and wind.
This week looks challenging, but we just need to keep our heads up. There’s still going to be a winner, and 38 more anglers will leave here with a paycheck. I want to be in that group.
It’s too early for me to make a guess on winning weight and what it will take to make a check. I can promise you there will be some big fish caught. There are always big ones caught when we’re in Florida.
I hope you’ll tune in this week for the live coverage to see how this goes down. Maybe I’ll be in the mix and get to hang out with y’all on Live!
Next week I’ll give you a full rundown on how it goes. Until then, go catch a big one!
