"Do what I say, and you'll be what I am," is what my outdoor writer mentor told me many years ago when I just was getting started in my outdoor-writing career. Hearing those words and following that advice produced an outdoor writing career far bigger and better than I ever could have dreamed.

"If you want black and white photography like I produce, do what I say, and the how and the why don't matter," Leonard LaRue, one of the greatest outdoor photographers who ever lived, told me. He was absolutely right because during his time he sold more outdoors photography than any other man alive and helped me sell more photography due to his advice. This same philosophy is true of successful bass fishing and life. If you want to become the best you can be, find someone who's already become the best at what you want to do and follow his or her instructions. This is what I've done in my new book, Bass Pros' Season by Season Tactics.

In this book, I've chosen some of the best bass fishermen to give you advice on how to find and catch bass during each period of a bass fish's life, including professionals like Kevin VanDam, Denny Brauer, David Fritts, Rick Clunn, Larry Nixon, George Cochran, Mark Davis, Woo Daves, Gary Klein, Davy Hite, Michael Iaconelli, Skeet Reese, Mark Rose, and Shaw Grigsby. My hope is that this book will help you find and catch more bass at every time of the year and each day you're on the water. The men included in this book are some of the best mentors I know of for successful bass fishing anywhere in the nation.