Happy Yamaversary

This summer marks 20 years that I’ve been writing for the Yamamoto Brand. My friend Terry Battisti, who started with the company long before I did, recommended me to then-editor Jerry “Bubba” Puckett, and after a little wrangling we got together and he gave me a shot. My first piece was a 12 part babbling run-on sentence in the e-newsletter, and then I published an article about a day in the boat with Rick Clunn at the 2005 article. That piece was in the glossy printed Inside Line magazine, the descendant of the newsletter style mag that came before it, and the ancestor of today’s online version. It wasn’t my first piece in print, but you could probably count them on both hands at that point.

Since then, I’ve published hundreds of articles all over the place, but Inside Line was always my testing ground, the place where I took chances and wrote about things that weren’t exactly out of the “how to handbook.” Sometimes they flopped. Sometimes they made me some enemies. But many of my greatest successes were on this page, or came as a result of what I’d written for IL. Jerry McKinnis called out of the blue one day to comment on one piece, and that led to a substantially greater role at BASS. Likewise, writing here about my travels led to partnerships with multiple fishing lodges and lots more travel opportunities.

Perhaps most importantly, I got to peel back the curtain a bit. For Battisti’s 50^th, a bunch of us went to Yamamoto’s Sugoi Lodge in Texas to fish, eat, drink and relax. One of the days we were there we were invited to Gary’s BK Lodge, too. While I was never intimately involved in any part of the manufacturing or business planning, if I had a question I knew who to call. Of course, the organization is different these days, better in many ways. I was proud that when GSM bought the company that I could have a conversation with Crispin Powley – who I’d likewise known for two decades – about the direction things would be going.

Very few things last 20 years – not many jobs or sponsorships, or even a super-high percentage of marriages. I’m not just proud that I’ve been here that long, but thankful for the opportunity. In some respects, everything else I’ve done – from on-the-water coverage at the Classic to serving on the Board of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, can be traced back to Bubba, with credit to those who came after him. The Senko has carried me a long way.