BACKLASH
Q&A
RON NELSON
BERRIEN SPRINGS, MI
Learn any hard lessons this season?
Oh yeah. In the first tournament (at
Sam Rayburn), you know, coming from
Michigan, coming from the snow and
the cold, I just decided to not do pre-
practice at all and just go straight
down. That was a little bit tough
because it was my first time being in
Texas and then also the first time fish-
ing a lake that was 10 feet flooded.
But I felt really happy with my prac-
tice. I had some groups of fish and had
some flipping fish, too. I just let some
mechanical stuff get ahead of me and
kind of lost focus on the first day. I was
on the fish and should’ve not let it
bother me and not worry about it.
Positive takeaways?
One thing that was kind of neat was
being roommates with Bryan Thrift and
Buddy Gross and a few others, for a lit-
tle bit. Seeing how prepared they are
tackle-wise; they pretty much haul a
tackle shop with them. I’m just not
committed to fishing for a living yet, so
on that level it’s a big difference.
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How’d you get hooked up with
Thrift and Buddy?
Oh, I met Buddy Gross at one of
the Costa championships that was on
Kentucky Lake, and we got along well.
Then we talked on and off about lodg-
ing. He said he thought he could
What do you do for a living?
I have a painting business. I’m a
painting contractor.
So what do you do in Michigan in
the winter if you can’t paint and
can’t go fishing?
I try to convince my wife to let me
go south.
I actually don’t fish much back
home, believe it or not. That’s why I
enjoy getting away and fishing the
Costa stuff. With work responsibilities
and fishing season being my prime
work season, as far as being warm
out, it’s tough to get out.
If you ever moved south, where do
you think you’d land?
Probably somewhere near Santee
Cooper or Guntersville. Of course,
Chickamauga is pretty close to the top
of the list too. That’s a sweet lake.
Do you still prefer smallmouths
over largemouths?
No. I never have I don’t think. I like
them all.
Wait, really?
Oh yeah. I’m a bucketmouth fisher-
man, don’t get me wrong. I’m not real-
ly a drop-shot guy. I mean, I’ll catch
smallmouth, and I love power-fishing
for them.
Were you surprised when you won?
Yeah, actually, I was. I really thought
Miles Burghoff would seal the deal on
Champlain, because typically you’ll
catch a 15- or 16-pound bag that time
of year fairly easily, and I figured he’d
stay ahead of me.
squeeze me in. I stayed
with Jimmy Brewer, who is a
super nice guy, a few times. I
stayed with Chad Grigsby and
a few other guys as well. I have
the utmost respect for those
guys. To see Thrift, he’s a machine,
and he’s a machine because he
spends all his time on his tackle, on his
preparedness. It’s still a little bit tough
on my level to come from home, from
work mode, to jumping in a boat that
hasn’t been touched since the last
tournament. The tackle prep and such
is not what it needs to be yet.
Congrats on winning FLW Tour
Polaris Rookie of the Year. How do
you feel now that your first sea-
son was so successful?
Really grateful. I feel blessed to get
Rookie of the Year and survive the first
year on Tour. It was fun.
By Curtis Niedermier
On a scale of 1 to 10, how dumb is
a bedding smallmouth?
It depends where you’re at. On
Champlain they can be probably about
as dumb as they can get. A 10. They’re
dumb. Back home they can be about a
1 sometimes. They can be gone from
that bed before you get to that bed,
and you’ll think the bed is empty but
the fish is actually there. These
Champlain fish tend to just sit there.
What do you think about the
Flogger?
I don’t like it.
Why not?
To me, I would rather have it be
gone away with just for the fact that
there are more and more spawning
fish that get targeted now that didn’t
get targeted before. I think it puts
more pressure on fish that guys
wouldn’t normally see in that range,
and now they can.
Have you had any weird wildlife
encounters when out on the
water?
I’ve had to take a deer to shore
before when it was stuck in the middle
of the lake and it was struggling to get
across. Me and another guy grabbed
ahold of the antlers and kind of
dragged it to shallow water so it could
walk out. Besides that, down south you
get snakes that want to come in your
boat once in a while, and I’m not a big
fan of that. I don’t mind the alligators.
They’re kind of neat to look at, and you
give them their space, but the snakes
are something else sometimes.
FLWFISHING.COM I FALL 2019