ESPN Elite Series

Editor's note: Longtime BASS Senior Writer Tim Tucker was killed Monday afternoon in an automobile accident near Gainesville, Fla. Tucker will be greatly missed by his colleagues at ESPN and BASS. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family. Story

This is his final report to ESPNOutdoors.com.

It was nothing short of surreal.

I have covered professional fishing tournaments for 25 years and attended hundreds of weigh-ins. But this was way out there…

Let me see if I can paint the picture for it:

On Sunday morning, I was watching Tim Horton sitting in his boat at the weigh-in dock at Lake Champlain at around noon on the final day of the Champion's Choice stop of the Bassmaster Elite Series. As if that wasn't crazy enough, I was watching him on the live "Horton Cam" on ESPNOutdoors.com as he talked to me via cell phone.

It was like an out-of-body experience.

The irony was not lost on Horton.

"Did you see me waving at you?" Horton asked. "Can you see the boat blowing around?"

It was a relaxed, almost giddy Horton that talked with well-wishers, did impromptu interviews with media types at lakeside and used an umbrella to get out of the sun. In his livewell was 19 pounds, 4 ounces of largemouth that — short of a Wizard of Oz type tornado — assured him of his first victory since 2004.

He excitedly explained his premature return to the dock.

"Man, I've got such a long run down to my spot. I said, 'Well, I could stay down here and keep fishing, but if I break down… So I made a good decision. Then I didn't want to get up here and stumble into an off-limits area or run a no-wake area, just anything like that.

"I ran about 75 miles one way each day. The weather has cooperated every day except for right now, and I'm so glad I made the decision I did. I'm looking at these trees just whipping over."

Horton made the long run to his magical offshore rockpile and stayed just long enough to whack the big school that lived there for the four straight days before turning around and heading back north. He was leisurely posing before the cameras on the dock at about 10:30 a.m.

"Anybody would have to have 31, 32 pounds to catch me," said Horton, who entered the final round with a 10-pound lead. "And there hasn't been a 6-pounder weighed in yet. I could look like the biggest turkey in the world at the end of the day, but I felt my best chance of losing was staying down there and having trouble getting back with such a long run. If we were on a normal lake, there is no way I would be sitting here. But it wasn't a normal situation on this big place.

"I'm running back thinking, 'What am I doing?' But I thought about this last night, and I set a target weight where it just made no sense for me to stay down there.

"Simple things like Edwin (Evers) had six fish in the box or just anything like that, you catch so many here that I didn't want to get into a situation like I said, where I got in an area where I wasn't supposed to be. I'm not familiar with this north area; I always go down south. When I got to that weight, I wanted to come in and sit right here and not do anything that could hinder my win."

Spending normal tournament hours lounging at the dock had "been pretty neat. I don't know if it is for Wes, my camera guy who has had to stay with me since he's my observer. We've been laughing about being in the penalty box.

"But it's incredible. It's some of the most fun I've ever had. That one hour this morning I think I might have made five casts that I didn't get a bite. I've never seen anything like it in my life. We've been a lot of places, but I've never seen anything like it. That place I had at Toho was something and the place I had on the Potomac was something, but this was like fishing in a stocked pond on its best day. That place was incredible."

I mentioned to Horton that his situation reminded me of his dominance in the 2000 BASS Rookie of the Year race. He was so dominant in his rookie season that year that he had AOY wrapped up without even fishing the final event (although he did).

"That's a neat point," he said. "And this feels weird. I didn't think I would garner this much attention doing this. I thought I'd just pull up here and hang out until everybody got here. It's weird sitting here."

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