Biography:

I’m a Calif. transplant living in Ocala, FL. I've lived here for the last 5 years. My home town of Sacramento/ Folsom, Ca is where I spent 40 years raising a family and working as a CNC/Machinist. I loved NorCal some of the best bass fishing in the country with the Delta, Clear Lake, Folsom and tons of other outstanding water.
I started bass fishing at the relatively old age of 24 my brother asked if I wanted to go fish some ponds. I was somewhat hesitant and had nothing going on so I said why not. The pond was loaded with 2-3 lb fish and I just had a blast, I was HOOKED.
It wasn’t long before I started fishing monthly tournaments with West Coast Bass Future Pro’s a Northern California tour, along with a regional-level team circuit. I had a great time, but I liked catching big fish and the tournaments were geared to catching 5 average fish . Sure, I learned a lot about bass fishing, but I wanted to focus on catching big bass. So after some thought I quit tournaments altogether and began my pursuit of trophy bass fishing.
I found a bass club to join that targeted trophy fish. The founder Todd “ Toad “ Crockett vowed to solve the great mysteries of catching trophy-sized fish with family, friends, catch-and-release the goal . The NorCal Trophy Hunters Bass Club was formed with the help of Dean Sault a charter member both Todd and Dean were Yamamoto Inside Line Pro-Staffer/writers at the time.
Education and sharing of information was an important function of the club. The list of speakers for our meetings was unbelievable they've included Senior California Biologist Dennis Lee, noted trophy bass fisherman Paul Duclos, Bill Simental, Inside Line Pro-Staffers Andy "Cooch" Cuccia, Gary Dobyns, trophy bass guide Larry Hemphill, Steve Sapp, Kent Brown, and many others.
This club had a major influence on my success as a trophy hunter sadly the club no longer exists. . I’ve caught many huge fish over the years but my 14.63 lb Largemouth out of Folsom is my personal best so far. I’m retired now and still being driven by my passion for my next big fish !!
Now I write/moderate for a really cool website called the Unemployed Fishing Club http://ufishclub.com/ a great bunch of fishermen and as our leader Mark "Caveman" Avery states “ you don’t have to be unemployed to join but it helps Ha Ha Ha I also enjoy chatting with my 4000 and counting FaceBook friends….look me up If your holding a fish your in !!
I'm looking forward to writing and doing some field work for Fish Explorer.com, Central FL has some outstanding lakes and rivers such as the famous Ocklawaha River,Rodman, Withlacoochee River, Lake Russo,Rainbow River,Orange Lake and the Ocala Forest Lakes all provide some great opportunities for catchin the big girls. BTW all of these waters are within a 30 mile radius of my house which makes for a very affordable trip !! This is a small snapshot, We'll share some more stories as we go along....

Best Regards
Danny Barker

PS, I'm happy to annouce that Mike Long Outdoors has asked me to be a contributing writer for his new website at..... "http://www.mikelongoutdoors.com/"