You see, this is only my fourth season fishing .. before that I had never really fished, driven a boat, towed really anything let alone launch and extract a boat from a lake. In fact when I bought my boat in the spring of 2012 it scared the crap out of me! But over the last 4 years I've read hundreds of articles, magazines, and web sites, attended countless seminars .. can you tell I'm a detail-oriented guy ... but most of all made friends with some of the most unselfish people you'd ever meet .. willing to share their accumulated knowledge with someone who shared a common passion.
When I bought my boat, the boys at Orleans Boat World told me I should start going out to Paddletales on Thursday nights as a lot of competitive fishermen congregate there just to talk everything fishing.
That next Thursday I was at Paddletales ... I walked through the doors, was amazed at how much tackle was in such a small place and started to walk around eyes glazed over .. what had I got myself into? But as I stood there, looking at the plethora of tackle, wondering what you would do with most of it, a guy comes over and says "Hey I'm Pete, whatcha lookin' for" ... and it just seemed like everyone there had something to tell me about fishing. Then I met the owner Ed and his wife Sandy, certainly two of the nicest people I know, and for four years now, I've been there most Thursdays and made a ton of other friends and now I enjoy sharing my stories with everyone.
Oh ya .. that guy Pete ... he's now my Renegade partner .. I wonder if he could turn back the clock
he would probably be thinking “Creating a monster, am I” 
Suffice to say, it's been a short but intense four years for me but a journey that I'm grateful for every day. Before I get to my year I want to thanks a few other people specifically for mentoring me along the way; Fred Young, Trevor Cheney and the Gaffney brothers, Spencer and Corey have always been great resources and I am thankful for your friendships.
Now on with the show ...
I started my year by going down to Lake Champlain in early May with 13 other anglers, most are FishHawk members, for a three day weekend to kick off the year as some of the northern states have an early catch-and-release season. I fished the weekend with Corey Gaffney and although we slayed them consistently for three days, catching 4, 5 and 6lb largies, some of the best memories I have are from spending the evenings as a group either at restaurants or just milling about outside the motel rooms, smoking cigars, having a few pops and sharing some fantastic stories .. just ask Bobby Jordan
.. we all know why he’s goin’ back! If you have a chance to join this crew next year, it’s an amazing way to start the year.
Since I'm not much of a multi-species angler, I decided not to fish any lakes in Zone 18 until bass opened and took another trip to Lake Champlain, this time the north end, out of the Chazy River and then another trip with Pete down to Lake Oneida. I love to explore new water and both of these trips afforded me some guilt free bass fishing.
As the season opened, I found I had a lot more time to pre-fish than Pete, so, as in previous years, I took a colleague's son out with me and over the past three seasons have tried to pass on to him as much as I could of what I was learning. He’s now a diehard fisherman at 16 and we've done a couple of walk-ons together .. finishing in the top 10 in one. I'm not quite sure which I'm consistently more impressed with, the progress he's made in three years or how much that kid eats! It’s hard to forget walking into Timmies first thing in the morning and he orders 10 breakfast sandwiches .. yep .. that’s a 1 followed by a 0!!
I'm learning that competitive fishing seasons never really go like you think they will .. you only hope that you're able to put some quality time in on the water pre-fishing, and that what you learn is useful come tournament day. What you really strive to do, is to be able to adapt what you've learned pre-fishing to the conditions on tournament day because they are inevitably never the same!
Most of the guys that fish Renegade have been doing this for a long time so my expectations are not so much results based but rather based on improvement and confidence. That being said, our results were better relatively this year and we made the classic .. even though in those last moments prior to the announcement Matt Massey tried to convince us otherwise
The fall season is one of the best times of the year .. it's fun fishing at it's best and this year the weather has been great as I'm still fishing and it's Dec 9th.
I've enjoyed this fall season immensely .. caught a ton of fish ..
fished with a couple of guys I've never fished in the same boat with before, Paul V and plowjock, and took Tia out for our yearly Remembrance Day fish .. (I feel lucky as it's evident she doesn't fish with everyone
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So how did this madman get started; in the fall of 2011, a colleague was nice enough to take me out bass fishing on his wake-boarding boat and the rest is history. Well this colleague of mine then up and moved to Toronto the next year and I never had a chance to thank him and take him out fishing in my boat. Well as luck would have it, he returned to Ottawa on a contract at the start of this past November and the first thing he said to me was "Do you think we could get out fishing before you put the boat away for the season". Well I have been waiting for almost four years to repay him for introducing me to fishing, so fish we did! This was clearly one of the most satisfying moments of my year, as I watched him catch some pretty nice fish, giants to him, and to just witness the sheer joy he was experiencing. Thanks again buddy!
So yes .. I had a great year. I am a much better fisherman this year than last year and I clearly caught more big fish this year than any of my previous three years. BUT, the best of this year is in the memories I've made fishing and talking about fishing with my friends, and for that, I am thankful.
All the best during the holidays everyone.
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