20 Questions with Ray Hanselman

Talking titles, Texas smallmouths, steaks and snakes with the hottest pro in the Lone Star State

Ray Hanselman is on fire. The Del Rio, Texas, pro won back-to-back Rayovac FLW Series Texas Division tournaments to start the 2015 season. His first win was in February on Lake Amistad, which is Hanselman’s home lake and where he runs a guide service. His second win came last week on Sam Rayburn.

I caught up with Hanselman the other day and hammered him with 20 questions. The interview, while lengthy, gives a pretty solid look at the life and personality of this Texas stick.

 

1. No one has ever won two Rayovac FLW Series events back-to-back before you. How’s it feel to be the first?

Oh, man, it’s just … I don’t know. What’s the word that everybody says? Surreal? It’s just unbelievable. I expected to do decent at Rayburn. That’s a lake I just click well with, and I was fortunate enough to land a couple of the bigger fish each day that a few other guys had get off. I think just eating Lucky Charms for breakfast helped. It’s just starting to sink in. My phone has blown up for 48 hours now.

 

2. During practice for Sam Rayburn, did you think you were on the potential winning pattern?

I don’t know about a winning pattern, but I thought I was on about 18 pounds a day. I figured 18 pounds a day would have a chance, and then I’d see how it shook out at the end. The first one I hooked in practice was a 4-pounder, and then I went hookless and counted bites each day. I had 20 to 30 bites a day in practice and practiced three days. I knew some of them were going to be 2-pounders, but sometimes you can pick up on them and feel that it’s a little better fish.

I think everybody who made the top 10 was around the same kind of fish. They just had things happen where they couldn’t get them through the trees. When you try to pull a 5-pound fish through a 10-inch hole, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

 

3. When you won the opener on Lake Amistad, you used a tail spinner, a crankbait and a swimbait. At Rayburn, you flipped flooded cover. Is versatility one of your strengths, or do you really prefer to fish one particular way?

I’ve always been pretty versatile. Living in south Texas, I’ve got Lake Falcon, where there’s a lot of crankbait fishing and flipping, and Amistad, where there’s a lot of deep fishing and fishing hydrilla, either with swimbaits or flipping the grass. It’s just a great place to learn how to fish. I enjoy certain techniques better than others, but my favorite is the one that they’re biting on. Being a guide, too, I have to change up all the time to keep people on fish, so I try to keep up with the latest and greatest.

 

4. We heard there were a lot of snakes in the flooded brush at Sam Rayburn. Have any close encounters?

I saw a few snakes. I had one big willow stump that had a bee nest in it that had a fish on it every day, and that was interesting. I tried to hit it early while they (the bees) were still asleep. The second day I hooked one of my better fish out of it, and they got pretty excited. It got hooked up right on the edge. I was so glad he came out pretty quick because I didn’t want to have to get down close to the nest. A few times I looked up and there was a hornet nest right at eye level, and that was kind of interesting. But snakes, I only saw a couple. That’s a good thing. I’m not much on snakes.

 

5. You’re from Del Rio and grew up on Amistad. What was it like growing up on that lake and now making your living there as a guide?

It was unreal. Luckily, my dad, Don, he fished. He had me out there when I was 3 or 4 years old. I was eaten up with it from day one. Any time I saw water I wondered if I could catch a fish out of it. Looking at land and seeing a bush or a tree that was fallen over, I’d think, “If that was in the water, I could catch a fish off it.” I grew up loving the sport and had a fish sense about me I guess. When I was young watching Bassmasters and FLW on TV, we were a whole world away from Sam Rayburn and those lakes over there. I just wished I grew up over there then. Now I’m just happy I grew up where I did. Living here in Del Rio, it’s a small town. We lived in town growing up, but I could get home from school, dad would hook up the boat and we could fish until dark every afternoon. After my homework, of course – most of the time.

 

6. After the Amistad event, we posted an iON video of you on the website and YouTube that showed you running to your winning spot through a narrow, shallow canyon. First of all, how long did it take you to master that run without busting up your boat? And what was the reaction you heard from people after they saw the video?

The first time I made that run, I wasn’t sure about it. I just saw the rapids, I saw that shallow water, and I pretty much just gassed it, trimmed it up and said we’re either going to make it or we’re not. Luckily, I went up there with some daylight and the sun up high so I could see any obstructions in the water and could wind my way through it. In low light you couldn’t see that little 2-foot-wide channel. Definitely, you couldn’t idle through it. It was too shallow with too much current. On plane is the only way. I ran through there and thought, “Wow, that was cool.” Then I went about a half-mile and realized I had to run back through there a second time.

It [the reaction to the video] has been nonstop. Everybody just couldn’t believe it. How deep was that? That’s probably the main question I get. It was anywhere from 6 inches to a foot. That first time I came back through, there was a blue heron standing right in the middle of that ditch, and the water wasn’t even to his knees. That’s when I was like, “Oh man, I wish I wouldn’t have seen that,” because I knew exactly how deep it was then. After that video a friend of mine tried it. He came back with less metal on the bottom of his lower unit than he started with. He tried it right at daylight when he couldn’t see well enough.

To me, after I fished my second spot [on the final day], I probably could’ve caught a 12-pound limit and done just fine, but I knew I had a better chance of catching a big one up there. I had just caught two fish back-to-back, and I decided I was going. I had three or four fish, whatever it was, and I just told the co-angler, “I’m going before I don’t.” To me, it was worth the gamble. I just felt like I could make it happen.

 

7. People talk a lot about momentum in tournament fishing. If anyone has it, it’s you. Do you believe momentum affects your performance? And are you more confident now?

It just seems like you make the right decisions when you have that confidence on your side. It’s funny how that works, but it does. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. I might come in in 100th place in the next one, but when you have confidence on your side, you make the right decisions.

 

8. Random question, but one I have to ask of a Texan: What’s your favorite steak cut?

Just a 16-ounce ribeye, medium rare, with grilled shrimp on the side.

 

9. You’re obviously in the lead for the Texas Division Strike King Angler of the Year award, but some big names – Denny Brauer, for one – are right behind you in the standings. How do you like your chances of winning AOY with the final event on Lake Texoma?

It’s going to be tough. There are three or four guys that are right there that are really good fishermen. Denny, of course, he’s Mr. Consistent. I’m going to try my hardest, and that’s obviously the goal now, to finish the year as Angler of the Year, but it’s going to be hard. Texoma is kind of my nemesis. I either do really well there or really bad. Hopefully I can continue some of this momentum and have a decent finish and see how it all shakes out.

 

10. The Texas Division roster is packed with absolutely phenomenal anglers. I have to believe that you guys all know each other pretty well and have competed against each other for years. What makes the caliber of angler in that division so high, and how the heck do you prepare yourself to fish against them?

The lakes are so good, and bass fishing and tournament fishing have always been like Texas football, in that all the good recruits come out of Texas. I don’t know how else to explain it. There are so many good lakes, so many days of the year you can fish, so many styles of fisheries you can learn on. If you’re a bass fisherman in Texas you have to try to be one of the best. It’s like trying to carry the torch. You have to represent, I guess. The competition is so tough it makes you better. There’s a lot that goes into that.

I used to get nervous that so-and-so is on them, or that I have to fish against him or him. You can’t think that way. You have to go out, you against the fish. You can’t worry about who’s entered or what they’re catching or where they’re fishing. You have to put that all out of your mind and worry about yourself and your abilities and what you can control. That’s probably helped more in the last five years than anything.

 

11. Lake Amistad is legendary for its giant largemouths. In recent years, however, fishing has been a little slow there. You indicated in February that you think it’s about to pick up. What’s the status?

I’ll just say this. If the tournament would’ve been two weeks later, it would’ve been really hard for me to win because they started showing up out of the blue water. On guide trips, we’ve been catching, minimum, 40 a day, up to 60, and 18 to 25 pounds a day. Everybody is wondering where they came from. They were out in the “ocean,” I’m telling you, for several years, but anglers have just been fishing where they’re not. We lost about 90 percent of the hydrilla, and that just scattered them to the wind. But this lake is so deep and has so much current that they can live out there. They can go out and relate to the ledges and suspend. The same scenario happened in the 1980s. Then [when the lake came back up] people started catching 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-pounders again. Those fish weren’t born last year. They just moved.

Now we have a lot of grass again. There are some flooded bushes. The fish are coming up and staying. They swam through the hydrilla and came up and spawned, and then went back to the hydrilla in 15 to 25 feet, where people are comfortable fishing. They’re catching them again.

 

12. When I was in Texas to cover the Amistad event, every truck in the parking lot was some type of Texas-themed edition. What gives?

It’s just a marketing ploy. I don’t know. Texas has a lot of pride in Texas I guess.

 

13. We saw a lot of smallmouths caught at the Amistad event. How’d the smallmouth fishing get so good? Do you think you could hang with the Northern guys on a smallmouth fishery like St. Clair?

We’ve always had smallmouths in the area, but they’ve been in the rivers. I’ve fished for them in the Devils River that flows into the lake. They’re running float trips for them there. And then below the Amistad dam in the Rio Grande is probably the best smallmouth fishing in the state that nobody knows about. You can catch 50 a day, all 3 to 5 pounds. It’s really hard to get access to them because it’s all private. But that cold water coming out of the bottom of Amistad is the ideal smallmouth habitat – the current, the rocks, the cold water. I found out about them because there’s as mall community that lives on the river below the dam. A friend in high school who lived there told me he was catching all these bass in the river, but they’re brown. I went with him and took my normal bass stuff – spinnerbaits and flipping stuff. The first one I caught, I thought, “This is pretty cool.” Then it was on.

Fishing tournaments on Texoma is where I learned to fish for smallmouths in a lake scenario. I’ve caught more 5- to 6-pound smallmouths out of Texoma than I have anywhere. They are some roaming, hard-to-pin-down fish, I know that.

The smallmouths showing up in Amistad have been here, but when the lake dropped down a few years ago it kind of got down to where they’ve been living. They’ve kind of followed that water level back to where people have been catching them. There’s a guy whacking them daily by sight-fishing them off beds, catching 15 or 20 of them a day.

As for hanging with the Northern guys, probably not on day one, but give me a day and a half and I’ll have them figured out. No, I’m just kidding. Though I bet it wouldn’t take me too long to get on track with it.

 

14. On a lighter note, do you have any bass fishing themed belt buckles? That’s a Texas thing, right?

Actually, yeah. I’m in the hunting business too. My wife made me a buckle that has a deer scull with big antlers, which is my brand, and on the bottom is the Power Tackle logo, with a fish coming out of the hook.

 

15. Speaking of flashy apparel, what’s with the chartreuse hats?

That’s kind of the latest trend or whatever. Judy, with Power Tackle, said she got me some new hats. I looked at one and said, “Do I have to wear this?” She said yeah. Obviously, I did wear it, and now I’ve got to wear it. You know how fishermen are – superstitious. On day three, I’m wearing the chartreuse hat for sure. I’m not big on the trucker-style hat too much because I’m kind of going bald on top, and the sun burns the top of my head pretty bad through that mesh. But I’ll wear it and grit my teeth the next time I brush my hair.

 

16. You’re considered one of the top tournament anglers in Texas, and you’re obviously on a hot streak. What are the odds that we see you jump up to the Walmart FLW Tour sometime soon?

I would love to. It’s just, with a young family, it would be hard. I have 3-year-old and 7-year-old sons, Mason and Miles. I’m coaching baseball right now. It was tough to even break away to practice for Rayburn. I left Easter Sunday to go to that tournament. That’s not high on my wife’s list, but winning it sure helped to smooth it over a little bit. I definitely would have to have a pretty heavy sponsor to just take the pressure off being gone and not making a living at home.

 

17. Not only do you guide anglers on Lake Amistad, you also guide hunters in south Texas. Which would you rather target: a 10-pound bass or 10-point buck?

Gotta go with the bass.

 

18. When I called you, you were at baseball practice. Did you play any sports growing up?

A little bit. I played Little League baseball, but it was during the best time for fishing. I made a decision when I was 9 or 10 that I wanted to fish, so we fished. In high school I played on the golf team. Golf is a pretty good sport for a fisherman. You have to think and concentrate. There are so many variables that are out of your control. It’s a good sport, period. I think a fisherman, a good tournament fisherman, could make a good golfer.

 

19. At Amistad, we nicknamed you Hanselmania. Thoughts?

My wife got a kick out of that. It’s better than not being called anything. If you’re not being called anything you didn’t place well enough. So I don’t mind it.

 

20. Will there be a three-peat?

Ha, man, I don’t know. That’s not up to me. But I’m gonna try. That’s all I can say. I’m not going to give up. I’m going to do some homework and go have a little bit of an extended practice. I’m actually going to fish a tournament the weekend before and just really focus. I’m just looking for a good finish. God willing, if I win that would be icing on the cake, but I’m looking for a decent finish to maybe have a chance at Angler of the Year. That’s my goal.