Skeet’s Beat – By Hook or By Crook

Well, I told you last week that my mom was going in for heart surgery on Tuesday
and I’m happy to say that everything went well.

The doctors told us that
the surgery went well, and when mom woke up she was talking and visiting with
the family by the next day so we were all really happy with the results. My aunt
and uncle are going to stay with her for a little while and make sure that
things go well with her recovery, and then I’m sure everything will be well
along the way.

The day after the surgery, I had to hop on a plane to
Denver to go to the TroKar Hook Summit with Brent Chapman, Scott Martin, Shaw
Grigsby and the guys at Eagle Claw / TroKar. I arrived there late because of
staying with my mom, but got there in time to take part in most of the
meetings.

We spent one of the days in meetings talking about ideas for
new products, and I’m pretty excited about some of the things that came out of
the meeting. When you put a bunch of anglers and a company that is as aggressive
as TroKar, you get some pretty good ideas.

The next day we went through a
heavy day of photography and video work for advertising campaigns and marketing
in the future. It was one of the most intense sessions I’d been through in a
long time. I was getting tired by the end of the session, so I pounded an energy
drink in the late afternoon to finish up, and it worked well – too
well.

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was wound up and couldn’t
sleep. So I was up late and we were going fishing early the next
morning.

Before I get to the fishing trip, I had an interesting happening
myself. we were all staying in the same hotel as the Presidential Candidates
while they were in town for the debate on Thursday night. I had the President
and Mitt Romney in the hotels on either side of me. There was so much security
down there that I didn’t think I was going to get through to my hotel for a
while there.

Anyway, we went fishing at the same lake that we caught all
of the big trout on mini jigs last year. It was really cool, we fished for them
on my signature Finesse Tube and Jig spinning rod and Victory reel, 6-pound-test
Berkley 100% Fluorocarbon and light jig heads with mini tube jigs on
them.

We threw them to the edges of the weed beds and caught trout up to
eight pounds last year. This year, we didn’t catch as many because it was too
windy for us to use the light jigs, but we still caught a few. It was really
tough to control everything in the wind, so we got off the water, and I headed
to the airport for home.

I spent the weekend with my mom, and then came
home to see Kim and the girls. Now it’s just back to getting my cardio going for
the next couple of weeks before my next trip.

Later.