Finally, I have made a return back to ‘The Catch‘ after a few week break. To be quite honest I haven’t been pumping out much content due to the fact of being so busy. In fact, I am sitting here typing out this story at 10:35 P.M. the night before I leave to go to Lake Eufaula to cover the St. Croix Bassmaster Open. Which I am pretty excited about. It has been a pretty chaotic last two weeks, but we are about a month away from West Virginia tournaments to start to get rolling and I am so excited to get the season started.
So I thought I would get on here to give you kind of a preview of what you will be seeing this season as far as coverage for each tournament series we plan to cover on DockTalkWV.com.
Obviously, being 500+ miles away from home I can only do so much from a remote location. Plus being as busy as I expect to be I can’t always cover the tournaments to the fullest but we will do our best with what we got. We have a few volunteers who have stepped up to write as well. Love their hearts… nah, just kidding I appreciate the heck out of them and I am excited to see what they can do.
That being said I am so excited to bring more coverage to West Virginia fishing and it has always been a goal of mine to create a league that provides the best coverage for the best fisherman in West Virginia. And I feel like that is exactly what we are doing with the Marshall Bass Super Series. Yes, I am still playing a pretty large role behind the scenes. Albeit, Bailey, Levi and Lawson have stepped up to the plate to take a lot of the responsibilities as far as the tournaments go. Without them none of this is possible and I am very positive they are going to carry the torch just fine in 2023.
Without going into a bunch of hoopla about that, I want to give a preview of the plan for the Marshall Bass Super Series and the other tournaments we will be covering here on DockTalkWV.com.
Marshall Bass Super Series
We are putting a lot of emphasis on these tournaments in particular because we are continuously trying to grow the trail as far as putting more eyes on the trail. We shattered boat number records last year, but this year we have our eyes set on viewership numbers with the new limited field size which will feature a great lineup of teams.
What you can expect to see is more photo galleries throughout each event provided by Lawson Blake. The plan as of now is to get him out on the water for each event as well as shoot the sights and scenes around take-off and weigh-in. Still photos are a great way to help promote the trail and showcase what the anglers are doing on the water as well as capture important or historic moments for the Super Series.
Not only will Lawson be taking a lot of the responsibility for taking still photos, but our intention (depending on cell service) is to live stream or record the weigh-ins and upload those to YouTube to be watched again at a later date.
By no means do we think it will be perfect, but we do feel like this is putting the Marshall Bass Super Series a step ahead and important to the Series for the upcoming year.
BASS Nation of West Virginia
My next emphasis is to provide the BASS Nation of West Virginia with some coverage throughout the 2023 season. The biggest organization in West Virginia deserves to be covered and I have an immense amount of respect for the guys who excel on the trail there. Truly the best competition in West Virginia.
Not sure as to what exactly I want to do quite yet, but definitely looking to get with each winning team an interview for a write-up directly after the tournament if possible. As well as mixing in some pre-tournament coverage talking about the venue and the favorites going into the tournament.
Ferguson’s Great Outdoors Marine Open Tournaments
Grant and the guys over at the Great Outdoors Marine have done an excellent job just in one year running their trail and so we are also going to throw some coverage over to them in 2023.
For Grant and the guys expect to see similar coverage that the BASS Nation of West Virginia receives.
Kayak Tournaments
One thing we have missed the ball on as far as getting coverage for is kayak tournaments around our state. We have such a talented field of kayak anglers locally who are also very competitive on the national level that I want to dig more into kayak tournaments in West Virginia this year.
Helping lead the ship with writing is our friends Mikey Holcombe and Evan Adamson who have been willing to step up to bring some written interviews for the site on select kayak tournaments that I can’t grab myself.
So be on the lookout for those!
As the 2023 season rolls on, obviously we want to hit on some big events as we see fit. In a perfect world, I would love to cover every single tournament. But there is only one of me and way too many tournaments to keep up with for just myself. So we have to pick and choose.
But it is very exciting to me to finally be able to have time to do this and it is something that I have wanted to do for a really long time. West Virginia fishing is a very unique and different form of fishing and I want to share that not only with the locals of West Virginia but anyone who views our site. I have been around this country fishing college tournaments and seeing giant bags of fish weighed in everywhere we went. Seen sights and scenes most people might not ever see in their life.
But nothing fascinates me more than seeing two friends or partners be able to break down a lake in West Virginia to win a tournament. It’s always something different and interesting to watch and I am glad that I have got to be there for a lot of those types of tournaments. Buckle up, 2023 is going to be a fun one and hopefully there isn’t a lack of content.
