Bear,

I'll take a shot at the final round especially since I've only got a couple of people to beat for the championship. You can have my name put on that trophy now just to save time

I would definitely accept the boat ride from the BASS member. I use to be one of these guys and while I was never particularly outstanding, as a group they are some pretty sharp fishermen. I would take any fishing suggestions that they wanted to offer and would not hesitate to ask for advice

I would start working the cover along the shoreline and pay particular attention to long points of land that run into the water. I would make a special attempt to fish bridges and the rip rap around them. I would also work over the rip rap and concrete area of boat landing if they weren't too busy with boat traffic. Channels in my neck of the woods are a little too deep to be much fun to fish with a fly rod but if we were on a shallow lake, I would certainly give them a try.

I would select the two rods that I regularly use on lakes when I fish from my little row boat. Nothing hypothetical here! One rod would be a mid-flex nine foot, nine weight with floating line and a braided leader with 15 pound tippet. The other rod would be similar but would have a fast sinking line and 5 feet of 15 pound Stren for a leader.

For my flies, I would select two Clousers which I fully expect to lose to snags at some point. Both would be tied on 1/0 gold bait hooks so they could be pulled loose from snags and bent back to shape. My colors would be brown back/orange belly and wild olive back/clear belly.

I would want two Gurgle Pops. One tied on a 1/0 hook with green foam back/white belly and green/white feathers and bucktail tail, making the whole fly at least 5-6 inches long. My second GP would be tied in a #8 hook and would be a standard chartreuse gurgle pop.

My final fly would be a woolly worm with a red tail, yellow body and grizzly hackle. I would go to this for big brim if the bass were hard to find. It would also be an effective fly for LMB in the 1-2 pound size

Note: The Clousers would serve double duty. They could be dredged deep for LMB or fished on floating line for schooling stripers and hybrids.

Remember to engrave that trophy to Eight Thumbs not 8T!