Marty Robinson was so pumped for the first day weigh-in of his first Bassmaster Classic last year on the Red River in Louisiana that he started dancing on the deck of his boat.

Robinson, who loves to dance with his wife, had told her jokingly that when he made his first Classic he was going to dance, “and she held me to it,” he said. “ Anytime you come out on the big stage like that, you see all the fans and start feeling the music and adrenaline takes over.”

That was his first Bassmaster Classic and he finished 29^th. The 2013 Bassmaster Classic next week on Oklahoma’s Grand lake of the Cherokees will be his second and the Lyman, S.C., pro hopes he has a lot more to inspire some dancing moves than adrenaline.

“In your first Classic it’s hard to take in everything. I think the second time around you are over the jitters and can fish a little more relaxed, make better decisions and don’t rush yourself like the first time,” he said.

And BASS could not have picked a better lake for the Classic, Robinson said, because not only does it fish to his strengths, it has been very, very good to him in previous tournaments. He finished 7^th in his first Elite Series tournament on the lake in 2007, his first top 10 finish in the series, and last November Robinson and his partner James Blythe topped the field at the 4th annual Fish & Chips combination fishing and Texas Hold’em Poker tournament on Grand Lake. In two days of tournament competition, he brought in a total of 35.93 pounds that included a day two limit of 20.04 pounds, the only 20-pound bag of the tournament.

Even the 2007 Elite tournament, which was held in the hot summer, should help him in this Classic, Robinson said.

“The pattern I fished then probably won’t come into play a whole lot in the Classic, but some of the areas I caught those fish in will. In that tournament I weighed in several 20-pound bags and when you catch them like that in a pretty good area you know they live there,” he said.

“Each day I would have fish follow up. I’d catch a 4-pounder and there would be 10 to 15 bass with it, so there are a lot of quality fish in those areas. I might have to catch them a little different, but I know there are some good fish there – and any time you do well on a lake it builds your confidence.”

Grand Lake matches his style of fishing, Robinson said.

“It’s got a lot of rock and it’s a really good jig lake. It’s also a good cranking lake and those are the two ways I like to catch fish. It’s also got a lot of docks and I like to fish docks.”

Robinson said many of the places he caught fish in the Fish & Chips tournament last November should also be good spots to fish next week.

He plans to spend the pre-Classic practice period Friday-Sunday looking for fish in medium depth areas, the 10- to 15-foot zone, he said. Then on the final practice day next Wednesday before the start of the Classic he’ll be doing some last minute checks on potentially productive spots.

“The fish in those deeper zones are a little harder to find, so I’ll look for them in practice. In the Classic I can always run down a stretch of bank and check the shallow water fishing.”

Robinson, who earned the nickname Marty the Party with his dancing moves in the 2012 Classic, is hoping for a good reason to bust some moves on-stage next week.

“It just depends on how the first day goes,” he said. “If I have something good to bring in I probably will be dancing.”

Bassmaster Classic Preview

Feb 22-24, 2013

Grand Lake

www.bassmaster.com