The guy who'll be the oldest rookie on the Bassmaster Elite Series next year – and undoubtedly one of the oldest tour-level rookies in bass-fishing history – has quite an interesting background.

For one thing, he blocked for Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Terry Bradshaw at Louisiana Tech University and was actually introduced to bass fishing by his former quarterback when both were still collegians. For another, he designed the crankbait that eventually became the Bagley DB3, along with other offerings produced by that company over the years.



And curiously, he's a longtime Floridian who doesn't much care for Florida-style fishing, and doesn't consider himself particularly good at it.

Lee Sisson, the 4th-place finisher in this year's Central Opens points race, has no idea how he'll fare in his initial Elite Series season. But the 62-year-old plans to enjoy his chance to compete against the best anglers in the world, some of whom are less than half his age.

"I sort of feel like the dog that finally caught the car," he quipped. "It's like, 'Now what do I do?'

"I'm going to go out there and try to catch as many fish as I can and win as much money as I can. But I've had a career in the tackle industry, I've enjoyed and I've done pretty well, and I'm going into this more to have fun. My competitive juices will kick in, but that's the way I'm going to approach it. I think that's why I did well in the Opens – I took that same approach."

Not Full of Himself

One thing quickly becomes evident in a conversation with Sisson: He's full of self-deprecating humor. For instance, he'll tell you that he had a big impact on Bradshaw's development as a quarterback, but it was in forcing him to become a better scrambler.

The son of a military pilot lived all over the place as a youth before enrolling at Louisiana Tech. One day he was invited to go fishing with Bradshaw and they got into a big school of largemouths, and he's been obsessed with that species ever since.

He was living in Baton Rouge and cashing pretty well in local tournaments on a deep-running crankbait (the eventual DB3) he'd designed and built himself when he had a chance encounter with Jim Bagley in a tackle store.

"We talked for a while and then he asked me if I wanted to go to work, and I said yes," he recalled. "Then he asked if I didn't have to talk it over with my wife, and I told him no. Then he asked how much money I made, and when I told him, he said he'd double it."

He worked for Bagley for 12 years, then started his own firm and ran it for 23 years before selling out to Yakima in 2007. He'd intended to do a considerable amount of tournament fishing during those 3 1/2 decades, but the time was just never there.

He competed on the Elite Series as a co-angler in 2008 (the final year of that format). When he expressed disappointment that he wouldn't be able to do that the following year, Kenyon Hill suggested that he fish one of the three Open circuits and try to qualify for the Elites as a pro.

"Nobody thought that was really going to happen," he said.

Ah, but it did. Not that first year, when he finished 26th in the points, but this year, when he logged finishes of 30th at Amistad, 15th at the Red River and 6th at Texoma.

"That showed me that maybe I can compete with these guys. This is an opportunity that isn't going to come up again, so I thought I'd better take advantage of it."

More Well-Rounded Now

Sisson said he was basically nothing more than a crankbait fisherman before his lone season as an Elite co-angler. But he absorbed everything he could about techniques during that campaign and now considers himself pretty versatile.

"I realized how one-dimensional I was, so I just used those tournaments as learning experiences," he said. "Every tournament was a lesson, and sometimes I'd get two or three lessons out of the same tournament."

He spent much of the 2010 Central Open campaign fishing a rig of his own design, and plans to utilize it on the Elite Series as well. It's called the Dangle Berry, and it's nothing more than a free-sliding weight attached to a hook that gives unique action to a Fluke- or Senko-type bait.

"It's probably one of the most effective things I've ever (designed), and it's also the simplest. When that weight slides, it gives the bait a pivot point so it darts from side to side.

"I catch most of the fish when I kill it and let it fall. It kind of goes around in a circle, just fluttering down, and if there's a fish there, he'll eat it. It's slow fishing and you'll want to move it (with the rod), but you shouldn't. That part will drive you nuts."

He offers the Dangle Berry through his website (www.SissonsDesigns.com), but he's not making a big push to market it at the moment.

"I've had a lot of friends tell me I should take it off there and hold it back (for himself), but I've just never been that way."

Notable

> Sisson led the final Central Open at Texoma after day 1 and said he'd have still been in the top slot after day 2 if he hadn't lost two quality fish. In any case, the final day was a disaster. "Even if I'd been leading, I still would've choked it on that third day," he said. "The wind blew real hard and muddied up the bank I was fishing, and I pretty much had to start over."

> He continues to work on sponsorships for next year, but is pretty comfortable with where he's at in that regard. "I'm still scrounging, but Skeeter stepped up for me and I've got some other things working that haven't been finalized. If I have to end up spending some of my own money, I will."