Remember how I talked about anglers missing practice because they had a long drive from that PAA tournament in Texas yesterday? And how Larry Nixon was one of them?

So it’s about 6 o’clock last night and I’m milling about the ramp, chatting with a few pros as they wrap it up for the day and pull their boats out. It’s starting to get dark and starting harder to rain. Also, the wind is up quite a bit from earlier in the day. So I’m talking to a wide-eyed young rookie pro when he says to me: “Hey, there goes Larry.” I turn around and, sure enough, I see a familiar Evinrude-wrapped Ranger towed by a familiar Chevy truck crossing the parking lot. Only this rig isn’t coming out of the water; it’s going in. In the rain. With nightfall descending in about an hour.

It was Larry Nixon, presumably just arrived in North Carolina from Texas, squeezing in a few hours practice when everybody else was hanging it up for the day. I would have asked him about it, but he launched his boat and took off so fast that I literally didn’t have time to cross the lot and grab his ear. The guy is 57 years old. The first thing he does after a long cross-country trip is take his boat out in the rain and dark to find a few fish.

I’m guessing that that’s the sort of dedication that makes him Larry Nixon. Needless to say, he’s staying in my picks for Lake Norman.

For the record, I also saw Curt Lytle come off the water last night. He was in Texas over the weekend, too. So that’s at least two of them who made it back and are making the most of their FLW practice. I’m guessing there are more.