Casey riffs on turkey hunting and crappie fishing during his off time, and talks about what he thinks it will take to win the Blue Ridge Brawl (again).

Z-MAN: When we talked last, you were planning on doing some turkey hunting and crappie fishing with your mom to unwind. How did that go?

CA: It went pretty good. The turkey hunting went well; we killed one bird. A friend that I always hunt with and I went early one morning and he killed one. And, let’s see, I took momma crappie fishing on Good Friday, and we caught about 30 or 40. I hooked up with another friend of mine, and we went the next Tuesday and caught about 200. We smoked ‘em.

Z-MAN: When you took your mom fishing, did she outfish you?

CA: Yeah (laughing), she does pretty good. She loves to crappie fish.

Z-MAN: You won the 2007 BASS tournament on Smith Mountain Lake with 57-03 in June of 2007. Considering this tournament is in mid-April, how much of what you learned then will you be able to incorporate into your game plan this year?

CA: Nothing at all, really. The fish are all spawning right now. I fished the main lake and points in that June tournament, and I checked some of the pockets near where I caught the fish in June, and they had fish. But as far as that helping any, you can find a big fish in any pocket on the lake. You just have to cover as much water as you can.

Z-MAN: So it sounds like it’s pretty clear that this tournament is going to be all about sight fishing for spawning fish, right?

CA: Yeah, and I hate it, too. I hate doing it. But last year, I didn’t do it, and I didn’t do very well here. This time, I just put my head down and looked during practice, and I probably found 150 fish on the beds already.

Z-MAN: Any size to them?

CA: You see a lot of two- to two-and-a-half pounders. Three pounders are pretty hard to come by, and fours and fives are really rare. When you find one, most of the time someone has already found and tried to catch it. You never know who has found which ones, or where to start. It’s kind of a crapshoot when you’re doing this.

Z-MAN: Concentrating on sight fishing, what types of baits do you expect to use in this tournament?

CA: Oh man, I’ve got about fifteen rods rigged up. You just never know. Every fish just has a mind of its own. You can have two fish only 10 feet apart, and one will react to a certain bait and the other one won’t. You just have to have a lot of different stuff tied on and use trial and error, pretty much.

Z-MAN: Are there any Z-Man baits in particular that you’re going to be throwing at them?

CA: There definitely are. I’m going to be throwing the CreatureZ, and I’m going to be throwing the little Finesse WormZ, which works really good on a shaky head, so I’m going to be using that one a lot. And then I’ve got two or three jigs tied on with Z-Man ChunkZ on them. I have a couple of ToobZ rigged up, too, in different colors. And that pretty much sums it up. I’ll be using a lot of plastics, a lot of jigs, a lot of finesse baits. Anything from a half-ounce jig to a one-sixteenth ounce shaky head—I’ll be throwing a wide assortment.

Z-MAN: What kind of weights do you expect it will take to stay in the hunt?

CA: It’s hard to tell until you enter the first day and see how many fish actually hold and how many guys are counting on the same spot. I figure 13 pounds a day will probably get you inside the Top 50 cut, and I would say 15 pounds a day would get you in the Top 12. But this is going to be a really close tournament either way.