2025 Review:

This past year was a mixed bag of personal gains and losses. I’ve gone through both quite extensively. I’ve lost friends and family members. I’ve also gained friends, licenses and skills. At the end of it all I continue on my life mantra.

Life is a series of stumbles and getting back up. We walk l, we fall down and we get back up. The key isn’t in getting back up. The trick is to make a decision to keep moving forward and never go backwards.

I’ve gained quite a bit personally from the SUF community. Skills, training, and opportunities are second place to the actual friends and bonds I’ve been able to enjoy.

Here is my only picture for 2025. One last look at the sunset off my stern. Looking towards my bow for 2026.

Thank you all for just being YOU.

📣We have an EXCITING announcement to make this evening at the community roundtable. Friendly reminder the roundtable starts at 7PM EST. The link is pinned in the community section. I will also drop it in the comments below! Don't forget to be thinking about your goals for 2026. These can be both for fishing and personal! Brian Latimer will be joining us. Looking forward to ending 2025 with the SUFam!

Just joined this week

Looking forward to being a part of this group

👀Did your photo make this weeks 'Photos of the Week' feature in the SUF Email?! Be sure to be on the look out for these emails to see schedule updates, Event announcements, exciting promotions, and featured photos!

Question: If you could fish anywhere in the South this weekend, where would you fish?

What’s up Straight Up Fishing fam. Fishing has been few and far between since Thanksgiving with everything going on — the passing of Tron, Christmas, work, and just learning how to manage all of it. It’s been a mix of grief, responsibility, and the chaos that comes with the holidays.

Over the past couple of days, with some unexpected downtime and the Christmas rush finally slowing down, I took the time to turn a shadow box with some candy and a gift card into a small memorial for my brother. I truly felt his presence while putting it together.

I know without a shadow of a doubt he’s still in my ear telling me to try my hand as a co-angler in the BFLs. I hate to admit it, but this is what it finally took for me to pull the trigger and commit to it.

So BLat and anyone else in the SUF community — if you’ve got any tips, advice, or words of encouragement for a first-time BFL co, I’m all ears. Appreciate y’all more than you know. 🎣

I’ve had enough. Help me….

So this is going to be my second season fishing a local club. On most lakes I can get my limit quick just throwing my normal confidence lures. Never can get them really big ones during tournaments. My question is on game planning, should I throw my Texas rigs, wacky, shakey, spinnerbait, etc to start my morning to make my limit then start trying to cull by throwing bigger baits, or should I just take a gamble and throw big baits all day??

Howdy Brian. I agree with you that the largemouth tend to school more in the summer and winter, leaving more lakes unpopulated. I joined this school with the desire to become more consistent. I have caught bass over 10 lbs. I’ve caught 30 and 35 lb bags in a day. But I zero way more than I like. If I had to guess, I would think it’s as high as 70% of the time. I’ve tried staying in the area and trying to figure it out. I’ve also tried hitting a number of different spots in a day and making a few casts then moving to the next. I also fish where there is at least bait and some structure (usually a presence of birds) deep and shallow. Granted, I’m on a pretty tough reservoir. But I know I can do better. I am convinced I am fishing where they are not. I don’t even see many bass on forward-facing but usually tons of bait. I have all the latest electronics. Maybe I should be using side imaging and 2D more. Any suggestions?

My son and I fished together on Saturday. The temp was up and the bass were very active. We caught so many that we lost count, sometimes they were snatching the bait the second it hit the water. We were using plastic worms again and also tried a couple of plastic swim bait. They hit all the plastics! Anything slow retrieve was good to go. I’m learning more about what the bass are eating and how plentiful the food source is in this particular lake. I know that the bass can only grow based on the food source. I think I have my son hooked on fishing for bass! He might be one of my new partners!