I'm fishing the Fishing for Freedom tournament this Saturday at Belton. We get the HONOR of taking a veteran (active or retired) out for a day of fishing. I didn't find out about this deal until about a week and a half ago, but signed up immediately. Found out who my "soldier" was going to be and contacted him via email. Boy this kid was excited. He's pretty new into bass fishing and texted me a ton in the first three or four days. So we decided to hit Belton today and do a little pre-fishing. Good young man and he was pumped to be out on the lake. Because of weather reports we decided to wait until about 7 to decide if we were going today or tomorrow. As always the dang weather man was WAAAY wrong. Met him at the ramp at 8:45, loaded up and off we went. I've only been on Belton three times previously but had been doing some map study and found a place that looked decent. I hooked up a couple of dinks pretty quick and then I hear him start to holler! Beauty of a small mouth at 3 pounds 10 ounces. He was pumped at his new personal best. We only had til 1 o'clock to fish as he had to pick up his kids from school so spent a good deal of the day teaching him a few new techniques and generally just running and "looking". Way to go Aaron! Hope we get on em Saturday. 5 like that will probably get a good check!!

Excellent. Thank you for sharing.

Good luck to both of you!

Awesome post and a very nice fish. God Bless our Vets!

Yes sir! Good job to you....and him!

Good stuff!!! Good luck this weekend

Good job Randy!

How did y’all do in the tournament today?

What a beautiful day on the water! As did most of the 225 boats 450 men and women who fished it, we struggled. One team caught em with around 20 pounds. 13 something for second. After that if you had 11 pounds you were in the money. But it was my fault. Boat problems. We drew number 187 and were next to last flight out as we took off at almost 7:50. Went to our starting spot and unfortunately it was already pretty loaded up with boats, but I had already told my guy to expect that everywhere we were going with that many boats. We slid over to a point and I caught 4 dinks pretty quick but couldn't catch a keeper. Decided to move and it was a pretty good call. I tell my guy to throw over to a giant rock next to the bluff and bam...he hooks up a nice one close to 4 pounds. I jump to grab the net and just as the bass surfaces...oops. Bass and jig...gone. He thought it had broke him off, but when I looked at the end of the line I see the telltale curly que at the end of it. Knot didn't hold. Got ready to move after another 20 minutes without any action and alarm start going off on my boat. Since we were still near takeoff we had to stay close. Caught fish off and on all day, just never got a keeper in the boat. I have to give Aaron credit. He was so excited about the whole thing. One of his soldier friends and partner did manage to catch a little over 10 pounds and cashed a check in 10th. Still all in all had a great day with a good young man. I had let him use a new rod and reel set up pre-fishing and on tourney day, and when we were loading up I handed him his rods and he handed mine back and said, "this one's yours". Nope, now it's yours. Gave him the new rod and reel along with some hard baits and plastics. Very humble and cool young man.

That’s awesome.