No Top 10, But 5 Pretty Good Events from This year by Alan Clemons
gengberg December 16th, 2009
No top 10, but five pretty good events from this yearI saw one of those “Ten of the Decade” story teases online the other day and thought about how that might relate to professional bass fishing in the last 10 years.
It’s definitely been a wild decade, with FLW Outdoors ramping up its payouts with contingency programs to reach the millions and BASS being purchased by ESPN. It seems like only yesterday we were at the pre-Classic dinner with Mardi Gras fish bead necklaces, icy cold Abita and watching Davy Hite cap a remarkable two-year run.
Then, whammo! A big network took over and things changed. Arguments can be made about what changed for the good and bad, and things did in both directions. If there was a tech bubble in the 1990s, then there was a bass bubble in the 2000s that finally burst with the nation’s economic struggles.
How about big events just in the last year? OK, let’s come up with a few. I can’t do 10 because my brain hurts. I’ll pick five from the BASS and FLW circuits. That’s easy enough:
1. Kevin Van Dam winning his fifth Bassmaster Angler of the Year Title with a final-event comeback on the Alabama River in Montgomery. Van Dam stubbed his toe the previous week in the inaugural Bassmaster “post-season” and gave Skeet Reese a chance to bookend his 2009 Classic win and 2008 AoY with a second one, but he faltered on the final day. There’s no reason to think Van Dam can’t match or surpass the record of nine AoY titles.
2. Skeet Reese claimed his first Bassmaster Classic with a masterful and dominant performance on the Red River in Louisiana. He faced tough competition in Mike Iaconelli, who came up short, and Kelly Jordon, who inexplicably left an area on the final day that could have turned been a difference-maker. Reese celebrated his victory after leaving the arena with the trophy by going through the McDonald’s drive-through with his wife and daughters.
3. Greg Hackney began his career on the FLW Tour and in August won his first championship at the Forrest Wood Cup in Pittsburgh. Iaconelli also was in the mix for the win but came up short. Hackney told me a couple of months ago that when Ike didn’t have the weight on the final day, “I really thought I might have a good chance to win it. And then I did!” Hackney deposited a $500,000 check in his hometown bank, which shut down the bank for a little while.
4. Kevin Langill went completely nuts at the Guntersville Elite Series event when he and 2007 Classic champ Boyd Duckett got into an on-water argument about hole jumping. It got ugly, resulting in Langill losing his Day 2 weight and missing the cut. The following morning at the dock before takekoff, Langill got into Duckett’s boat to shout at him, then went on the water acting crazy before being told to leave by enforcement officials. Langill was suspended from the Elite Series for the rest of the season.
5. David Fritts rekindled some echoes at the first FLW Tour event of the year, on Lake Guntersville last February. Cranking his Rapala DT baits and making multiple casts to targets, Fritts caught 45 pounds 2 ounces the first two days and 38-1 the final two days to claim the Chevy Open and $250,000. Not a bad way to kick off the season. It was the tour’s first visit to Huntsville, Ala., and Guntersville, with a return trip to both venues scheduled in June 2010 to end the season.
– Alan Clemons
