When you arrive in Windsor, North Carolina from the highway that passes it to the south, you drive past a sign. It’s a sign you could pass without noticing. Around the sign, which sits atop a pole, there are a thousand distractions. On one corner there is an old house from times gone by, its paint crusted and peeling from the bent wooden frame, on the other the blinding lights of a gas station. A river flows behind this mis-en-scene, which is framed in turn by a swamp. The sign can easily be missed. What did it say? I turn around at the corner to read it with care. It says: “WWII POW Camp…

It obviously gets harder to discuss results when your horse isn’t winning, or even placing. But you also know that the horse is a pure breed and that it has all of the qualities it needs to perform well. And we fans who passionately cheer for him continue to believe that he can still compete for the top spots. Maybe we don’t appreciate that this year is not a competition year like the others. Our champion is running now with the fifty best horses in the world. As such, a poor result can still put him on the track to a better result. …

In recent years, techniques like wacky rig and neko have become very popular among Bass fishermen around the world. The need to have a specific hook for this technique that had specific characteristics of snag resistance, ease of bait rigging, and hook set capability, led me to request BKK to develop some prototypes. …

When the first bass you catch weighs seven pounds, six ounces, you can be pretty sure your day has begun well and you would say it on almost any lake. But on the Bass Pro Tour, anything can happen. For example, you might land a giant bass and then not catch another, or you might find yourself surrounded by fish you only see in your dreams – or surrounded by gators. Luckily, gator season was……

Jacopo competed in his second tournament of the season when he fished his home lake, Guntersvillein the Phoenix Bass Fishing League tournament there. He chose to compete and practice there even though it is not part of the Bass Pro Tour, because it nonetheless offered Jacopo a chance to stay sharp, practice new strategies and try new spots and techniques…

Having obtained his last minute invite to the long sought after Bass Pro Tour, Jacopo showed up on Toledo Bend loaded with hope and new insights to begin the new season in the best way. A few days of official practice available to him provided interesting results, so much so that he thought he might have a good tournament. We have to remember, however, that the Bass Pro Tour fields the top American professional bass anglers in a particular format. No longer is competition a question of landing your five best fish (by weight), but rather the total weight of all an angler’s catches, which are essentially without limit. This format is possible due to the presence of a marshall in every boat who instantly verifies the weight of a legal fish, thereby recording the catch in the live standings. The tournament, which is transmitted live from cameras on the boats of the pros who are highest in the standings, is essentially live and the standings are continualy updated. All of this radically changes the strategies that each angler must adopt in order to win. From the search for big fish and from sitting on a single spot, anglers must instead seek out zones that hold the most bass of a medium-large size. …

Despite all of our love for bass fishing in all of its forms, it’s hard not to remark that the spectacle of live-streamed bass fishing from American tournaments has diminished over the past two years. It’s a shame, because the Americans are masters of televised entertainment and we are a bit surprised by what is happening on the MLF circuit. The advent of fishing with Livescope and with similar technologies obligates anglers to endure long fishing sessions curved over the screens at their feet, without ever casting toward structure or an interested grass mat. Of course, the bites can come at a constant clip, but for those of us watching the live stream it hardly constitutes a spectacle. Add the live weighing and immediate release, and you’ve also lost the show at the podium. Apparently, this last method is better for the fish, who are returned almost immediately after being landed, sparing them the stress of a visit to the livewell. But in reality, a tournament that is devoted to catching the biggest fish limits the number of catches (thereby placing fewer fish in the livewell), and in that way is different than the unlimited catch that is the formula of the Bass Pro Tour. In sum, in watching Jacopo’s tournaments from home, we, the Italian audience, have noticed these changes. We are also sure, however, that American media won’t easily betray their commitment to spectacle and entertainment, and that they are probably already reconsidering it. …

Jacopo was travelling to practice a big lake that was far away from home when a phone call changed his plans for 2024. It was as if the train that he thought would pass him by suddenly stopped in front of him. And Jacopo had to decide quickly: should I board the train or not? Every adventure involves some risks, and if you do not take any risks you will never know how the adventure might have ended. It’s like in the Italian movie It Happens Tomorrow: set during the European revolutions of 1850, it depicts two “butteri” (Italian cowboys) who have never left the Maremma region of Tuscany as ride through Italy to discover the truth of what is happening. Their catch phrase is “If you don’t go, you won’t see!” In the end, Jacopo climbed aboard the train. And we will all get to see where the adventure leads him. And so it is official: in 2024, Jacopo Gallelli will compete on the MLF BASS PRO TOUR …

It isn’t easy for anyone – not for me, the writer, and not the least of all for Jacopo – to confront results that are decidedly unfavorable. The previous four tournaments developed as we might have wanted them to but they did not result in checks (even if we appreciate the result at Cayuga). But then Lake of the Ozarks turned out to be a beast (and not the good kind) for Jacopo; in consecutive events (Bassmaster Open and MLF Toyota Series) he failed to fish up to any standard of sufficiency….