I rang in the New Year in Atlanta pulling for my Tigers. Unfortunately they were unable to beat the enemy Tigers from that other Death Valley in South Carolina. Still it was a fun trip, I enjoyed another road trip with the wife and time spent with my family back in Fulton County.

It was never really an announced goal or something I planned out ahead of time, but it was pretty fun this past year to catch 12 different species on the fly in 12 months. Accomplishing that led me to try to come up with something different for 2013, perhaps something a little more difficult. Drawing on the inspiration of others before me, I decided on something I’ve been eyeing for a few years now, something that will allow me to fish a ton of new water, targeting species I’ve never caught or even seen in person.

I’m talking about getting back to my bass fishing roots and going for the BASS slam, catching all nine different kinds of bass in one year(technically 8, with the 2 subspecies of LMB). This will put me on the road a good bit, fishing rivers all over the southeast from Texas to Florida. It will involve a great deal of background research so that I can hit the water with confidence knowing I’ll catch the target species, and catching it at the required minimum size.

I’m really looking forward to this challenge and to 2013 being the year of the bass for me. I kind of got away from river bassin’ in 2012, opting to chase redfish most of the time, but that will definitely change this year. The formal BASS slam is the ultimate goal, but I will be more than thrilled to just make it out to all these destinations and land every different type of bass, especially if I can do it with the fly rod….