By the time Dennis Tietje graduated from LA Tech in 1987 with a degree in agri-business, his interest in fishing had advanced from catching bream and crappie with his dad around their south Louisiana home in Roanoke to trying his hand at catching bass on D'Arbonne, Claiborne and Cross Lake.

"My roommate's family had a camp on Cross Lake so we fished there a lot. We'd also sometimes sneak off to the lake at the Moose Lodge in Ruston and it was on that little lake I learned how to fish a plastic worm," Tietje said as we visited recently.