Here's a blog entry from Mark Zona describing his day of on the water with the most recent winner in the annual BoatU.S. Angler Zona's Awesome Fishing Trip contest. The smallmouth bite wasn't great that day, but the excursion was nonetheless memorable.
Made Better By a Knucklehead Like Me
I do a sweepstakes every year with BoatU.S. Angler, and believe it or not, I actually take it seriously.
Look, I’m not the smartest crayon in the box, but I’m wise enough to realize that while I’m fortunate to fish all the time, to the person who wins that trip, there’s a real good chance they only get to fish a few times a year, and it’s likely they’ve never caught a boatload of big smallmouth.
That said, it’s a big deal to the sweepstakes winner. And in turn, it’s a big deal to me.
We’ve had three different sweepstakes winners now, and it’s kind of amazing how a random process sends such differing personalities and people to catch smallmouth with me. The most recent winner was a guy from Kentucky named Steven “The Vacuum” Taylor.
Yep, that’s what he told me within minutes of shaking my hand. He said, “They call me ‘The Vacuum.’” I had met my match. A total stranger. A sweepstakes winner. Who talks as much smack as I do.
So my first thought when we hit the water was, “I’m gonna unplug The Vacuum.” I knew for a fact that Steven and myself were gonna have a blast. And we did.
Of course, the day he was here was one of the most impossible autumn smallmouth bass days of my life, and it didn’t take him long to start busting my chops with jabs like, “Are we on the same lake you take all the sweepstakes winners to, ‘cause they aren’t biting real well.”
We managed to catch a few with dropshot rigs on 6-pound line, but man, as cheesy as this is gonna sound, the day really wasn’t about fishing.
It was about making a new friend. Dog gone it, I loved the guy. Steven Taylor is a knucklehead just like me. I picked on him 1,000-percent, the whole time we fished, and he gave it right back – and he gave it back bad.
In fact, at one point he said, “Hey Z, if we don’t catch ‘em pretty soon, can I win again to get a make-up trip please?”
Like I said earlier, I take this annual fishing trip really seriously. I want it to go well. I’ve always wanted to make sure the winner catches lots of smallies. But here in year number 3, thanks to Steven, I truly came to realize the day is about way more than how many times we set the hook. It’s about fun. And it’s about friendship.
Somebody’s gonna win the BoatU.S. Angler Zona's Awesome Fishing Trip in 2014. And I’ll go into it a better person. Seriously. Seeing a bigger picture. Because of my day with “The Vacuum.”
