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Team Toyota pro Terry Scroggins looks to take advantage of a warm front and make hay on his home waters.

If you’ve been a fan of professional bass fishing for any length of time, the name Terry Scroggins certainly rings a bell. The Team Toyota pro is a well-known expert on Florida waters, and he looks to capitalize on his reputation this week at Suzuki Marine Stage 2 – Harris Chain of Lakes.

Although the tournament is being held on a fishery just over an hour from his house, Scroggins is still dealing with somewhat of a learning curve.

“I’m coming off a tough tournament on Conroe,” Scroggins said. “Honestly, a lot of it was just trying to figure out the new forward-facing sonar format. I learned that you have to be smack-dab on a good school during that ‘scoping’ period and if you’re not, you’re essentially dead in the water. You have to make hay while you’re allowed to use the forward-facing technology, and I simply didn’t in Texas. What’s funny though, is that I caught the big bass of the event—a 9 1/2-pounder—on a little bitty jighead and minnow but I just didn’t have much else to go with it.”

If you were a betting person, you’d be hard pressed to overlook Big Show for this upcoming event on the Harris Chain. Not only is it his home water but the weather looks absolutely perfect for him to put on a Florida-fishing clinic. While he remains modest in his approach, lots of other pros have him on their short list for this event.

“I’m running around town in my Tundra on our off day and it’s 86 degrees,” Scroggins said. “The weather people say it’s going to be in the 80s for the next week so we have plenty of great weather ahead of us. The bad thing is that they’ve had a fish kill in Apopka recently and that’s where a lot of the big bags have been coming from. Add to that a bunch of recent fishing pressure from some other big tournament trails and I honestly don’t think it’s going to be as easy as some folks might think.”

Shallow fishing is likely to dominate this event due to the time of year and the weather, but when Florida bass make their moves to the shallows, they can be some of the finickiest bass in the country. Even just a degree or two of water temperature change can totally flip their moods.

“I want to spend a bunch of time sight fishing in this event,” Scroggins said. “But you have to be careful with that in this format. If you’re camped out on a single 6-pound bass, your competitor can fly down the bank and catch 10 small fish and jump way ahead of you in the standings. It’s definitely a delicate balance. I’m going to have to pay close attention to the body language of the bass when I’m sight fishing. If she’s making tight circles on my bait and staying interested, I’ll probably stay on her for a little longer than I’d like. If she’s uninterested and swimming big circles around my bait, I won’t have much of a choice but to move on to other, more willing participants. The time management aspect is just too important to ignore.”

History tends to be a tricky thing when pro anglers return to their home waters for a tournament. Imagine all the huge limits Scroggins has caught on the Harris Chain over the decades—that all has to go down the proverbial toilet this week. Every spring season is different in Florida and he has to try and ignore all of his history on this fishery to truly fish the moment. It’s easier said than done, but he’s prepared for the challenge.

“I can’t even worry about stuff like that,” Scroggins said. “I’m going to fish the way I like to fish and hopefully block out all the history I have in this area. These Florida bass don’t just change by the day and the week; they change by the hour and you have to put yourself ahead of them in order to have a shot at winning. And I plan on trying to do that.”

No matter what the weather might bring to the table, the Florida pro is certainly expecting to see some double-digit bass caught throughout the event. While that might sound crazy to some of us in the rest of the country, a February warm front in Florida does wonderful things to a bass and can create magic in a hurry.

“This is going to be one of those tournaments you’ll want to be watching because somebody is going to catch a giant on camera, if not multiple,” Scroggins said.

Will the prodigal son pull out the victory close to home? It’s too early to tell now but if you’re a betting person… he might be a safe one to put your money on.