Terry “Big Show” Scroggins has had a successful history at the Toyota Texas Bass Classic when held on Lake Fork. He captained his team to victory at the inaugural TTBC event in 2007 and more recently hauled a 34-pound limit to the scales on day one of last year’s event.
But this year, Big Show has a few concerns. Lethargically feeding bass, despite water being pulled through the Sabine River dam, and dingier water are on his list.
Nothing concerns Scroggins more, however, than the huge increase of fishing pressure from recreational anglers on this three-day holiday weekend.
“It’s one of the very best bass lakes in the country, most folks have three days off for Memorial Day and they come from all over America to fish this lake,” said Scroggins, just moments before day one blast off Saturday morning.
“Fishing pressure has been bad already in practice, so you know the weekend traffic is gonna get even worse,” he added.
Scroggins says he plans to spend 100 percent of his time fishing deep water schools away from the flooded shoreline, but even those harder-to-find fish away from the bank are sustaining a ton of pressure.
“A lot of the weekend guys are educated on how to find and catch those deep water fish these days—they know right where ‘the juice’ is for sure,” Scroggins said.
His Toyota teammate, Kevin VanDam, had his boat parked right next to Scroggins and chimed-in to support Big Show’s thoughts.
“I noticed some of the deep fish I caught in practice looked pretty beat up from having already been caught,” said VanDam.
Holiday weekend fishing pressure aside, it’s still Lake Fork, plenty of big bass still swim here and five bites can add up to 30 pounds in a hurry.
“I still think you’ll need to catch 30 pounds a day to win, but it ain’t gonna be nothing like last year,” said Scroggins. “You’ll not see near as many big stringers caught among the field overall. I’m guessing if you could average 23 pounds a day, you’ll be way high on the leaderboard when this thing is over.”
Amid a fishing trip on the bass-starved Ohio River in the summer of 1987, Alan McGuckin’s Dad told a then 16-year-old “Guck” — “I don’t care what you do for a living, just promise me you’ll do something you love.”
Originally from Pittsburgh, McGuckin considers himself a blue-collar kid, who has been richly blessed to live-out the best piece of advice his dad ever gave him for many years now in the Tulsa area.
After earning a degree in ecology at Juniata College in Pennsylvania, where he placed radio transmitters in largemouth bass to track their habitat preferences, he moved his life to Oklahoma in 1992, where he earned a Masters in Zoology and Fisheries under the direction of Gene Gilliland at the University of Oklahoma, before then embarking on what’s now a nearly three decade long career as a marketing and media veteran in the fishing industry.
His career spans 28 years of wisdom-rich marketing experience working to strengthen brands and increase sales for Lowrance, Terminator Lures, Toyota, Yamaha Outboards, Boat U.S., Carhartt, Costa, Quantum, Vexus Boats, and Zebco.
- Member of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame voting committee, as well as a Board of Directors member for Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
- Co-piloted the Terminator brand of premium lures from its birth to more than 10 Million pieces sold between 1997-2006.
- Has authored and published more than 800 stories on Bassmaster.com, along with several other popular bass fishing websites.
- He has generated $3 Million dollars’ worth of branded digital media since 2020, as a content creator.
- Serves as emcee for hundreds of guests at the annual Toyota Bonus Bucks Owners event.
- Avid angler, who fishes nearly every weekend when not on the road working.
- 13,000 followers on Instagram @GuckFishing.
“Guck” lives just north of Tulsa, OK at Lake Skiatook with wife Sherrie, an elementary school principal who also loves her job, and has a genuine passion for slinging a Rapala Brat crankbait on shallow points and habitat-laden flats.
