As we waded down a small creek near Bristol Bay, Alaska, trying not to fall over and fill our waders, Texas bass pro Keith Combs set the hook on a cartwheeling, hellbent-for-leather rainbow trout. It vaulted out of the water, and suddenly the unseen bears that he’d obsessed about minutes earlier...

You people in Florida and Texas shouldn’t stop reading now. Yes, I can hear your obnoxious laughter all the way over here in Virginia. “Winterizing? What the hell is winterizing?” If you’re going to use your boat 12 months out of the year, there’s likely no reason to take winter-specific precautions...

While most consumer dealings are relatively frictionless, there’s something about buying and selling a boat that turns people into lunatics. I’ve sold six fiberglass boats in my lifetime, and one Coleman Crawdad jon boat. I’ve also been on the buying end of an equal number of transactions, and I can...

Why bass? I felt a little bit dirty writing that, bordering on traitorous. After all, bass have been very good to me. They’re responsible for many of my greatest memories, they contribute to my income, and I’ve built a large part of my life around them. While they’ll occasionally disappear...

Three-time Toyota Texas Bass Classic Champion Keith Combs buried his face in the twin displays on the console of his boat, idling, idling, idling around a semi-private trophy fish factory in East Texas. Meanwhile, I was in the passenger seat stewing. Occasionally we’d see a fish blow up on bait or...

The two sonar units I have on my bass boat—one at the console and one up front—both contain more computing power than the 13-inch television I owned back in college by a factor of a thousand. Truth be told, though, they don’t get nearly as much use. I’m a tidal river rat, where a substantial portion...

In 2001, I fished as a co-angler in a tournament on Toledo Bend Reservoir, a massive body of water that straddles the Texas-Louisiana border and eats lower units for lunch. When they impounded the lake in the 1960s, they left most of the standing timber intact, cutting rudimentary and often poorly...

As an overworked and underpaid individual with family obligations and a budget, I typically get to fish about one day a week. With the occasional missed week and a few fishing-specific vacations, that ends up meaning I’m on the water perhaps 60 days a year. When I get out there, the goal is to catch...

So you want to be a bass pro? Where you live may play a role in your short-term and long-term success. Geography is not destiny, of course. After all, three of the greatest anglers of all time—Kevin VanDam, Mike Iaconelli, and Brandon Palaniuk—come from Michigan, New Jersey, and Idaho, respectively...

Plenty of boats will go 80 miles per hour, even in the hands of a novice. Many go 70 without even opening the sucker up, and just about anything rated for a 150-horsepower will go over 60. That’s all cool, but you typically don’t need a license or even any training to get one. There are no brakes...