KINGS OF BASS 👑 | S2, E2, 2021 | Kevin VanDam | Sam Rayburn

[Music] we're at sam rayburn texas stop number one for the bpt season and uh excited to get the season started incredible bass lake you know conditions are a little different than what i would expect this week i guess it's been a mixed reaction to this lake i don't really understand this lake good sam rayburn is a lake that i've got a ton of history with it's just an incredible place that i've been fishing really my whole career [Music] i like lights one last quick check over on everything [Music] should be good ready to go this is part of the life man you get up early i you know i live a long ways from most of the venues that we go to so today we're driving to texas or working our way to texas we're gonna make it to little rock got to do a podcast for plano tonight and then we'll make the rest of it down there but i am so excited sam rayburn's awesome like got a lot of history there and the big ones should be biting over my career how many times that i've done this i've made this trip a lot of times leaving before it gets light and driving until it gets dark part of the job beginning of a long day i got brandon he's filming me our stuff for uh king of bass we do a little series we do on on the road so very good luck one thing on these long drives you know you never know especially early in the year like this when coming from michigan you can and i've been through all kinds of snowstorms ice storms so having a thunderstorm or tornado watch like this it's not a big deal you know today with your phones and satellite imagery and that you can uh you can really be a lot safer and track your travel 12 hours down good to see you man scott how we doing man thank you you're welcome how are you doing good buddy hey buddy how you doing nice to meet you look at there right off the bat he's smart guy so brandon and i drove all day long and we are stopped down in little rock so tonight at seven it's wednesday night it's plano's college of bass again so we are going live at 7 central on facebook thank you we've got a great show playing tonight but we got brian latimer on tonight so it's going to be a great show so join us live here just a little bit 7 central just trying to get my last instagram story to load i think it just did brandon we're knocked down 12 hours today i've got six more tomorrow so this week's kind of cool because yeah i got brandon ozarzak he's uh one of the one of the film guys that we work with at strike king and lose and we're doing kind of a really neat series called kings of bass which is kind of behind the scenes so he's filming me on on the i'm the college of bass right now yeah you can see here step in here see see there's brandon it's gonna be fun you know whataburger is a texas staple dr pepper and whataburger that's both the things you gotta have when you come to texas yeah i'm i'm about three minutes away 18 hours later we are here so we've got to do you know some photos head shots and things like that they do some truck and boat photos it's the first regular season event of the year so getting all that media obligations out of the way and then we'll get ready for prep and start practice tomorrow go do this you don't have a mirror in here to you know make sure i'm all fixed up [Music] image is everything trucker no [Music] there's sprague here if you want to shoot anything with him so here we are right here this is the infamous local favorite jeff sprague look evidence right there cannot hide it it's everywhere in my boat i mean this is when i thought it wasn't gonna make it i'm just glad that the grass is green and it's warm compared to home i got to get a fishing license fishing life yep everywhere you go you got to have a fishing license so texas is a place we come to a lot so i always buy an annual license here for sure appreciate it thank you all so much so you start saying y'all in texas [Music] you know this is a place that i have a ton of history you know i've fished here lots of times over the years you know early in my career i set the five fish record for bass tournaments with a 31 pound 11 ounce stringer so same time of the year totally different lake conditions but this lake has you know a lot of big fish it should be a great week it's a lot of fun it's been fishing really good it's one of the best lakes in the country and it's going to be a great episode of kings of bass sam rayburn's one of those lakes that you know it's iconic to bass fishing you know it's just an incredible place that i've been fishing really my whole career it's uh the second day of practice cold morning i mean you can see your breath it's it didn't get above 55 yesterday and today it's you know gonna start out but the later in the week it's gonna warm up so we're dressed for it this morning we got one more day to to find them this lake is just an incredible fishery but there are so many people out here fishing i was i was blown away by the amount of pressure on the lake right now [Music] it's texas it's spring it's time to get them dude just like every ramp there's some kind of tournament going on 14 000 clubs and stuff like that it's one of the best fishing capitals there is and i mean we're here kind of at the side ramp and it's already almost full saturday in texas people gonna go fishing kind of cold and foggy so it was busy busy at the ramp so okay love you [Music] so we are out first thing in the morning again here on lake sam rayburn for day two of practice i got brandon ozarzak with me for strike king lose we are filming an episode of kings of bass for them you'll see it coming out soon so stay tuned hopefully find him today [Music] another one that's not a big one they're here though well the big one should be in the center of these ditches and pitch tons like this that ain't gonna cut it [Music] i fished my first tournament here i think it was 1992 it was a bassmaster invitational and i came down really the beginning of march and the lake was really on a i had a huge rain and it was rising really fast first day i ever seen the lake the water was like four feet above the bushes so that just the tops of them were under water and i could just take a spinner bait and just throw it over the top of those bushes and i mean i caught a hundred bass and caught probably 50 over four pounds the first day i ever seen the lake and thought it was unbelievable and then you know two days later a cold front hit when it dropped into the 30s and the wind blew out of the north and you couldn't buy a bite it's just the way it goes you know it's the lessons you learn but over the years you know it's it's been a good lake our electronics are a lot better and guys are much better at figuring out and finding them so it's it's made it more challenging this week will be a lot tougher to to find a group of fish it's it's cold and you know it's going to be warming up and the fish should make a big push back to the bank they did a week ago and they just absolutely uh had some unbelievable weights but now it's cold and they kind of backed off again we're just trying to find where they're at this is the ones you're looking for right here i got a boat right over here by me that's why you crank them drains right there six pounder all day pretty good one there strike king series five right in the center of this little ditch going through here [Music] you know after the practice that i've had if i could be able to pull this thing off and actually win here of course any win is spectacular you know i've been fortunate over my career to have a lot of success so i appreciate every single one but i'd really like to get one on the major league fishing bass pro tour [Music] y'all get to watch me cook how about that is it cold out there yeah sarita said she didn't sign up for these 30 degree mornings but we talking about practice man practice not the game practice probably get some tips on how to cook omelette wrong that was my brain just today looking for fish that andy's brains he's like 700 boats out there a 500 boat high school tournament today i had an old man one time practicing with me it was a champlain he said how come we don't never see no boats i said well tony if i find him out here i'll do good in the tournament i'll have him to myself he sat there a minute he said huh i'd rather fish around some boats and catch something and fish over here and not catch nothing i said well i guess you got a point tony whoo that's cold on my noggin whew just trying to put a lose hat on for y'all about frozen [Music] look this right here look at that that's ice in texas i'm grumpy make me grumpy some of our tournaments we fish no practice and you're just a lot more prepared or you make what you got work and it usually does sometimes i feel like i don't even need to practice some you feel like you need to practice a lot some really feel like you need to make sure you're practicing late this one i'm confused first time i was ever out here i was fishing the elite at saint john's did good there so i didn't get here i only practiced half a day first time i'd ever seen the lake i went out there and i got comfortable quick well let me back up practice i never got comfortable first day of the tournament i never got comfortable second day of the tournament halfway through the day i got to come one i felt like i knew what i was looking for all that to say 50 of my time on sam rayburn i'm thoroughly confused i ain't warmed up fast didn't that's sam rayburn for you hey you smell that bacon you know i i've seen something edwin put out the other day just how a professional could care less if he caught one in practice i mean we could little black birds usually a good indicator of grass [Music] coops [Music] wow ain't no way that water dropped that fast [Music] this is what you expect on sam rayburn a lot of moving around in practice yeah [Music] he's just so much i mean you look through there's so much for fish to be in it's really hard to pinpoint them that's what i need to do is pinpoint them i'm still semi looking for something different i mean i can get out on some grass flats community holes you can get on all else fails but just always do better if you can find something by yourself the goal for the season is is to get off to a good start like i said i've done that the first two seasons of the bpt is to get off to a good start and that's the goal it don't always happen but that's the goal is to always get off to a good start so my goal for this event is to get off to a good start ain't got that feeling that vibe i just ain't feeling it practice pretty much sucked for me so like what's the math on that three quarters of my practice was bad really bad and then a quarter of it was really good practice to me is just looking for a home where can i call home during the tournament just a visitor today but i got to find somewhere i think he's got some fish [Music] you know for me practice was really pretty tough you know i've caught a few good fish here and there but i haven't found like one solid pattern or one solid area or anything like that found an area that has a lot of numbers in it today but there's there's just not a lot of big ones we've been i caught a few big ones but there's just not a lot of fish there and there's not a lot of potential there so not the practice that i was hoping you know i mean you when you get done with practice you want to be there where you're you feel like you have everything figured out and it's just like hey i'm going to go execute my game plan here i know it's going to be changing thousands of locals out there and it's it's march and i'm going to kind of mix it up between two or three different areas in two or three patterns when the males move up the females won't be far behind so to start out with for sure right out the gate i'm going to be kind of fishing an offshore pattern where we can hopefully get multiple bites i'm living the dream just living the dream this is what you call organized chaos so i'm straightening it out [Music] i really just need to catch one fish per bait and i'll be good because i sucked yesterday i was ahead deep in tackle i need a scuba diving suit so i can breathe red eyes i bet vandam's catching one on it y'all like my tackle box zip locks see that i take all my hooks off my bait store them like that half people say i'm a genius for doing this and the other half say i'm an idiot i'm gonna side with the geniuses look how many baits i can store in there it's unbelievable and a tournament to me if you're gonna before i throw the bait i'm gonna put new hooks on it so oh no more untangling hooks and all that jazz i just do that right there see what it's going to be [Applause] what a zoo what a zoo honestly i hadn't even tied on many baits yet because i'm still debating on what i'm gonna do um but i pretty much took all morning took me like four hours to decide the area i fished the first day um i know fish live there but man rayburn fish is so daggum tough and uh i could go back in there fish all day it's probably my best chance to catch a big one good for heavy hitters uh a lot of offshore grass but it's just tough so what i've decided to do is go somewhere completely different i've had success in the past when when i just just start over if i have a bad day just just start over it's on the opposite end to the lake it's a place that i hope hasn't got a lot of pressure because man people fish around here and it's just so much pressure on these lakes i want to get away from the crowd i'm living the dream [Music] [Applause] so we're just about to get started here it's first morning competition you know after two days of practice you know i've still got a lot of questions to be answered so cold again this morning 39 degrees i know things are changing it's gonna be warm and sunny and not a lot of wind today so should be a whole different afternoon [Applause] we in texas it ain't supposed to be this that gum cold i don't know what to think i just don't this this is one of them you just really don't know what what's gonna happen going into it i got up at 3 30 this morning not because the fishing's that good just because it's the first one of the season that i'm excited for she purring [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] it's been tough it was surprisingly slow and that's what i expected after the practice that i had so you know i feel good to be in third place after the first day things are changing quickly and that's going to be the key here this week is as adapting as the week goes on hey the day's over it was tough on me i caught a lot of fish just couldn't catch them two pounders it was frustrating um but i got a lot of bites caught a lot of fish and just couldn't make it happen i just got a lot of thinking to do but right now i'm gonna need some crawdads that's gonna make all my day better i'm gonna eat them crawdads cause the bass [Music] did [Music] a little bit of this down there and then is that hot sauce yeah it mix it all you're good the trick to these crawdads is you peel that first little corner and give it a push you got the whole thing just like that like i've done it a million times are you the man how does that feel trade is your biggest trouble trending me the biggest crawdad [Music] shot my light back at you we're going to do something different we're going uh uh different directions so starting over on tournament day another comeback i'm not sure if i'm going to have more of them in my spots or i might have to go all the way to the bank hopefully we can have another solid day and move on to the next round [Music] [Music] tried to make something happen and it didn't happen it just just wanted them weeks where it didn't ever click for me caught too many brats caught a bunch of liars that's what i did every time i would catch one he'd lie to me i couldn't duplicate something my summary for the week is sam rayburn is full of liars because all them baths lied to that's the summer i'm out i'm going to south carolina how about it andrew it was a dream baby huh thinking about them crawfish well today was a real shocker you know i mean it's definitely very humbling every time you go out on the water and you think you got it figured out but you know i went out there today and conditions had really changed from all that rain and those storms and the wind that we had it ripped a lot of the grass up and it really changed the area that i had a lot of confidence in you know i went and practiced quite a bit today looked at a lot of different areas found a couple areas that looked pretty promising and and i saw you know i was pretty solid on the score tracker so i really made a couple of big moves just just looking trying to to find something real special for for thursday's knockout round and you know you got you got to fish where you know they live and the right habitat and where these fish should be coming to so looking forward to thursday and hopefully we can have a great day then this is the knockout round so everything goes back to zero we're all starting from a clean slate now we've got 38 guys out there vying for the top eight spots this is the kind of mornings that you kind of dream of this time of year [Music] [Music] one of the challenging things when you have is so many times and experiences on a lake like sam rayburn you know in my mind i knew that that offshore deal and those ditches and drains was a great previous pattern but you have to fish the conditions you know as it got warm i knew those fish were going to the bank i should have just locked into it a little a little sooner especially when that pattern went away i just should have just really focused on it and it committed 100 a little earlier but it's easy to say after the fact you know i mean i i learn so much every single time out i mean i've been doing this for a really long time and every single day i'm still learning like i'm a little kid [Music] you

Channel: Kevin VanDam

Views: 7,506

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: cM9cixp-H9k

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021