Daryl Kirby

There I was sitting on a park bench getting a little Vitamin D sunshine during a lunch break at the tail end of another magazine deadline. Survived another one. Deadline week causes a bit of angst and stress in my house. Not that any of y’all are counting, and neither was I, but a former coworker who might soon be rejoining the GON team did some quick math the other day and figured I’d now had a hand in making 663 magazine issues since starting this journey in March of 1989.

If you follow mainstream news, the drum beat of national politics never ends—budgets, departments, confirmation hearings, waste, fraud, taxes, tariffs and Trump… but you’re not going to hear anything about where the crappie are biting or whether there will be any turkeys willing to gobble this spring. At GON, we try to leave national politics to those other folks. Stories about local fur and fin suits us better.

The warming trend that hit Georgia last week had fishermen across the state itching to be on the water, whether pulling jigs for slab crappie or bass anglers hoping to roll a big one that moved up shallow. It sure paid off for GON content contributor Tyler Morgan, of Phenix City, who had a big winning bag on Bartletts Ferry during a Saturday tournament, and then followed that up with a monster sack on Lake Oliver the next day. Tyler is a recognizable name for GON readers.