1on1: Baitin' the hook with pro angler Martin Truex Jr. (cont'd)

Q: What do you fish for mostly on Lake Norman, bass?

Truex: Yeah, bass. I catch some striped bass once in a while, too, but I don't target that species too much.

Q: Do you clean 'em and eat 'em?

Truex: I eat the stripers. I don't eat the bass.

Q: Do you clean 'em yourself?

Truex: Yep, I clean 'em and cook 'em. I'm a do-it-yourself kind of guy.

Q: Do you know what 'noodling' is? [It's where 'fishermen' stand about waist-high in water and try to pull giant catfish out from under rocks and in the sides of creekbeds.]

Truex: Yes. And that's crazy.

Q: Have you ever done it?

Truex: I don't like to touch catfish, let alone put my hand in their mouth and try to pull them out of a hole. So no, I've never done it nor will I.

I caught a catfish off my dock the other day, and I was like, 'Ah, s---!' Reel it up, grab the pliers, shake it off and, 'Get outta here.' That's how that went.

Q: It seems like catfish is the only kind of fish I ever catch in my very limited experience ...

Truex: Well, see, that's the kind of fish you catch when you're just there with a bucket of beer, sitting on top of a cooler.

Q: If you had a top couple of fishing memories, what would they be?

Truex: When I was a young kid, we used to all go out -- me and my dad and my mom, a couple of uncles and a couple of my cousins. ... There were probably eight or nine of us on one boat, and we would go blue fishing. We would catch one fish after another. They were pretty big, too. We did a lot of it in the bay. If you're a kid, you want to catch something -- so for us, it was perfect. We would catch the livin' daylights out of those fish. It was a lot of fun.

Q: Who in this garage is a good fisherman, and who might think they're a good fisherman but they're really not?

Truex: Oh, I haven't really fished with many of them. I've fished with Newman, and he's pretty good. I'm not sure who else. I think Tony Stewart fishes some, but I don't think he's that good.

Q: I've heard Stewart talk a good game about fishing ...

Truex: Well, see, he and Newman fish in ponds a lot, and that's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's a lot easier to catch 'em in a pond. ... It's a lot tougher to fish in a big place like Lake Norman, where they have tournament trails come through and guys fish a lot, and there is a lot of pressure on the fish. You've got to do certain things to make them bite -- and that's after you figure out where they're at. There are so many places for them to go. They move throughout the season. Different times of the year at different water temperatures, they're at different depths and on different kinds of structures.

As far as that kind of stuff goes, I don't think I've got any competition. But other than that, Newman's a pretty good fisherman.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.