I remember him well. A ways back, I Marshaled for BASS on one of the Arkansas lakes. It was one of those deals where as an incentive you won a boat if your angler caught the largest bass while you were with them. The first day I was with Stephen Browning and the funniest thing about him was as soon as we got to his first spot he yanked his fishing jersey off. He was all business and didn’t talk much. To this day, I’ve never seen a faster hookset.

Day 2, I was paired with Derek Remitz. He shared with me details about stumbling upon the ledge in Amistad where he won. But he was also very humble sharing about how he grew up on a sod farm up north and how hard he worked and how much his parents supported his dream to fish. He wasn’t in the hunt for a top 10 or 20 so he asked if I had a good fish on the board from the previous day (I did not). His exact words were “Let’s see if we can go win you a boat”.

He drove to an open area where he knows a ledge to be and started chunking a deep diver and throwing a jig. Moved to another spot with some timber. Caught a few fish but nothing big. I remember he apologized to me.

Nice guy. Pray he comes out okay.