As I mentioned earlier this week I received a phone call from David Simmons at the FLW asking if I wanted to be part of a presentation at a school on the last day of practice.   I eagerly agreed to do the event.

Brian and I went out early and we did find a new area that had some fish in it.  We hit 5 fish in less than 1/2 hour.  I headed back to the bank around 10:30 to get ready to head to the school.

I met Scott Ellison and Don Dukemineer the Convention Sales Manager for the Huntsville/Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau and we headed out to the Central Colts Elementary School.  Now to be honest I had no idea what I was getting into.  To find out I was going to address the entire K-8th grade class of 740 kids.  I have talked to a lot of people before but this was by far the biggest audience I have had.  The gym does not hold all of them at once so we did it in 2 parts with the K-5 in the first batch, then the older children in the second session.

We met with the principal and then headed to the gym.  Scott had a pair of short videos one telling the FLW story and one of my win at the TBF Nationals.

After Scott did his part he introduced me and handed the microphone to me.  This is where the fun started.  These kids were a blast, attentive, and very quick to respond.  I went through a few things about being an angler on Tour and when we had a small technical issue I went into a Q and A session with the group.  Those young kids had some pretty good questions.

We went through all the normal questions of what was my biggest fish what was my favorite lure and things like that.  when we were done we had a few t-shirts to throw out and we told the kids to make some noise and boy did they ever.  At the end of the first session we took some pictures of the kids holding up the number one finger.

Now I had some trepidations about the older group, depending on the mood I was not all that certain how it was going to go.  But I was pleasantly surprised at their attitude and composure.  These were a bunch of good kids.  Again we went through the who likes to fish and who likes to catch bass, catfish, and specks.

The Q and A session was a little more detailed.  They wanted to know what lures to use on Guntersville and what section of the lake I was fishing.  You could tell they were very well informed about fishing.  Again the attitude the young men and women have is a direct reflection of the school and teachers that mold their young minds.

The older kids asked questions like:

What kind of sunglasses do I wear- Response Solar Bat

What rods and reels do I use -  G Loomis and Quantum

What boat do I run - Ranger

What engine and how big - Yamaha 200

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