As a High schooler, I fly fished a lot and tied my own flies. Tied many things you couldnt buy in the store. Had very good success on subtle color differences in pressured waters. I kind of got burned out on fly fishing for trout. Every stream felt the same. I kind of got good at it and when I realized this is when I was fishing this itty bitty creek and one guy was walking by and told me he hadnt seen a fish caught out of that creek in years. As he is saying that, I am setting the line on a fish. He stopped, flabbergasted and bs'd with me for some time and during that conversation, I caught 3 more in front of him. Just kind of lost the itch after so long.
I then transitioned to bass fishing and I liked the changing behaviors of bass around the spawn. In my mind, there were lots of similarities in chasing bass vs migration in waterfowl. Definitely a new challenge. When i was growing up into the sport and learning a lot, I ran into an old timer. he talked about how he used to absolutely smack bass on a purple jig. So, I bought some things and I tied up a bunch of purple jigs. Next thing I know, Im doing the same thing and just knocking the lips off bass on a purple jig. I kept it close to my chest and finished some little local tournaments and was placing very high. Just a young kid in a little aluminum duck boat placing in top 5 consistently. I fell in love with the sport at that point, but I made the mistake of leaving one out during weigh in and that sparked lots of talk on that lake. I also fell in love with the purple color during that time, and its a big reason my duck calls are purple and my signature color is purple. If anyone ever gets their hands on one of my decoys... the pupils of all my decoy's eyes are purple. If the signature ever wears off the bottom of the decoy, you'll know they are mine if you look in the glass eye and see the purple pupil.
Awesome jigs there. Those purple ones caught my attention in a big way.
