Back from Rayburn this past weekend, and down again this weekend. Fishing is, well it's really fun right now. From what I saw there are lots of fish shallow and lots of fish what I would call mid-deep, say 18-25 feet. This coming weekend a year ago is the weekend Skip Chancellor and I won the Ice Bowl last year with 28.68 and those fish were all 35-37 feet deep. But according to my log the main lake surface temp that day was 46-47 degrees, it's 9-10 degrees warmer than that now, or at least last weekend. I know winter is still lurking, but it the water keeps at the current level or rises at all in the next few weeks I would not be a bit surprised for some pretty decent sacks to get caught out of the bushes in Champs or TTT. Will be an interesting spring with very, very little hydrilla and no pad stems. There is a good amount of coon tail shallow, but my experience is that generally the fish don't set up in it prespawn, I've caught some post spawners there but not pre. Had to snap this shot, you know how you have a fish that aaalllmost touches 14", check out this guys tail, he really wants a ride to a weigh in this year.

Had a great week from a writing perspective, Gary Yamamoto's Inside Line Magazine published their 10 most clicked stories for 2015 and two of mine, made the top 10. You can see them ere, they are numbers 6 and 10.

• Click here for The Top 10 Stories of 2015 

Then to end the year on a high note Jay Kumar's Bass Blaster, a great weekly online Bass update picked up my most recent article I published with John Hope...just hope the fishing in 2016 is as good.

I jokingly posted the "Drum-berland" video when I went up to Kentucky for pre-practice not really thinking what an impact they could have on my tournament. Poor thinking on my part. As I did on my Facebook post I first have to say congrats to Ray Hanselman on a truly remarkable year, winning all three Rayovac events here in Texas and then going to Ohio and finishing the sweep for a perfect 4-0 season. If I learned anything from Ray this year it is that he is fishing in a different league, or more specifically he is making great decisions and he is extremely committed to what he is doing. He said he practiced under the dam at Amistad to get ready to fish the current up there, box unchecked for me. He spent 10 days up on the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers before cut-off fishing, I spent 2, partially checked box. But the box he is marking, I think, in big ink is trusting your instincts. He said on stage that he didn't really know based upon practice..continued 

If I can only get them to change the species we are after, I have it figured out...