Hey everybody I’m reporting in from ICAST. It’s always exciting to be here and see all the cool stuff here at the show, like the new clothing line from Simms.

One thing in particular I’m excited about is the new Lucky Craft 3.5XD crankbait. This just might be my all time favorite crankbait. Last week I had the chance to head out to Lake Fork with it and I just absolutely smashed them. The bait is so unique because of the design features that were carefully thought out. One such feature is the tungsten that’s in the lip. This helps the bait to really dig into the bottom and that’s how I love to fish them. I plan to fish it on my Duckett Micro Magic deep cranking rod and a high speed Revo reel. That combination is gonna let me toss the crankbait a mile, something thats extremely important in order to get the best results from a deep diver. When I pair that with 10-12lb Trilene 100 percent fluorocarbon I can dig the bottom at 18 feet.

Another new bait from Lucky Craft, the Smasher series is something that really caught my eye. The best way to describe this bait is, it’s a slow sinking swimbait, but its made to perfectly replicate the size of the brim we see in most our tournament waters.

Of course the other new bait I really like just so happens to be my signature bait, the Kelly J Jr topwater bait. Building on the success of the original Kelly J prop bait, we came out with a little smaller version to match the hatch of the smaller bait fish we find in the fall months.

Something that I wanted to share with you all was the new addition to my family. My daughter is seven weeks old and I can’t wait to get home and see her. It’s been a life changing experience, a good one.

I’ll keep updating you all on my offseason plans and some of my fall fishing trips. I expect to be throwing the Kelly J Jr. a lot in the upcoming months especially at Lake Fork.

Put in 12 hours pounding the ledges on Pickwick today. Found several schools of fish. I think some of the key spots will get pretty crowded during the tournament. We have three more practice days. I’ll need all of them I’m sure!
Joe Thomas Blog

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Since I only had a couple days home after UMF before heading to the FLW event on Pickwick Lake in Alabama, I hastily got some production work done for Stihl’s Reel in the Outdoors. I had five new episodes shot that needed what we call “sit down interviews”.
Joe Thomas Blog

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Well, we’re back at home after a week of houseboat camping at one of the nicest places I could ever even think about taking my family for a getaway. We went to Bullard’s Bar Reservoir, about an hour away from home and rented a houseboat and went camping with our family and friends.
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Today we crowned our 2011 Ultimate Match Fishing Champion! One Pro Angler is now $50,000 richer. As usual, production of the the final match took much longer than the preliminary matches. We didn’t wrap the shoot and the season till 8 PM!
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My co-host Fish Fishburne is over the top as he displays the UMF Championship Belt!
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We completed our third quarter final UMF match today on Mullett Lake. The new Evinrude powered Rangers are performing flawlessly and the weather and fishing continue to be great! Our crew is doing an outstanding job even though the production days are long.
Joe Thomas Blog

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We were able to do lots of running and aerial footage from a helicopter before our Ultimate Match Fishing this morning. It was a perfect, crystal clear morning. The footage looks fantastic. Oh yeah, the match was pretty awesome too. I love Mullet Lake and the Indian River, Michigan area!
Joe Thomas Blog

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Today was the our first Ultimate Match Fishing quarter final match on Mullett Lake in Indian River, Michigan. The lake lived up to its reputation as a stellar smallmouth fishery, with several big smallies caught by each angler.
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Wow, what a day! Lake El Salto continues to live up to its reputation.  The wind blew today and the crankbait bite was on. Most of my fish came on a chartreuse shad Lucky Craft Flat CB D-12.
Joe Thomas Blog

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