As a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department with a wife and two school-age daughters, you would think that Bill Siemantel has a pretty full plate. But somehow, this amazing angler has found the time to forge a phenomenal tournament record in local, regional and national events including a BassMaster victory at Lake Powell, pioneer the intricacies of big bass fishing, co-author an award-winning book “The Big Bass Zone” with Michael Jones, produce an equally impressive DVD on swimbait and big bass techniques and design some of the most cutting edge lures ever to grace a tackle store shelf. And that’s just the highlights.

While Siemantel does have the energy of a 250-pound hummingbird, it is more his nature of never settling for the obvious. Maybe that’s why he has caught over 400 bass exceeding 10 pounds and 75 in that magical “teen” category. To him, there always has to be something better, something the rest of us have overlooked and something over the next horizon that can unlock yet another mystery of this thing we call fishing.

The BBZ is not a place but a state of mind. It is somewhere where fishermen can go for cutting edge angling information. Not the manufactured kind designed to sell lures, but the stuff that keeps an angler moving forward.

There are no annual dues and no membership requirements other than a willingness to look beyond the norm.

Face it, there are plenty of magazines, books, videos and television programs out there claiming to be the answer. They talk of “secrets” and “can’t miss” techniques, yet deliver only thinly-veiled product endorsements and regurgitated, rewritten tactics of yesteryear.

The BBZ is something else. It is a zone where you check your ego at the door and then open your mind to all the possibilities. A zone where the so-called “rules” of fishing are there to be broken, where no angling dictum is truly sacred and where the only real mistake is not thinking for yourself.