The 2025 Bass Fishing Hall of Fame induction banquet read like a road map of my fishing writing career. Here are just a few of the people who made it special and brought me full circle.

I met Dennis Tietje at his camp on Toledo Bend in either 2001 or 2003, when he hosted a crawfish boil. I was one of the few interlopers there amongst the Hall of Famers. Until a recent trip to Grosse Savanne we’d never fished together. It turned out to be just about a perfect outing.

OT Fears and I have fished together in the four corners of the United States – from the Potomac River to Mille Lacs to Rayburn to the California Delta. Hanna and I were thrilled to run into OT and his high-school-sweetheart-turned-bride Maryline Marie at the Bassmaster Classic in Tulsa.