It’s tempting to explain the history of modern professional bass angling through a series of great men. Certainly, there have been more than a few individuals who’ve had an outsized impact upon our ability to enjoy this sport as participants and spectators. You’d have to include Ray Scott and Johnny Morris on any such list – after that, it becomes a barstool debate about the rankings of many other qualified nominees.
Beyond that, you might be inclined to view the sport’s history measured by the influence certain pro anglers have had. My personal Mount Bassmore consists of four men: Roland Martin, Rick Clunn, Kevin VanDam, and Mike Iaconelli.
Martin was the first to popularize “pattern fishing.” Clunn emphasized the mental aspect of the sport. KVD is the greatest competitor to ever hit the sport’s biggest stage; and Ike was the one who fully harnessed the multifaceted modern media in the era of branding.
You may quibble with those choices; that’s your right, and having those opinions is a valid part of fandom. But first, let’s look at an additional list of anglers who’ve shaped the way I and many others see the sport. I’ve been an ardent fan for over four decades and I’ve worked in the industry for more than two; while it’s the big names with the big wins who get the ink, sometimes to fully internalize the sport’s peaks and valleys, you need to see it through different eyes.
None of these anglers have ever won a Classic or a major Angler of the Year title. Some or all of their names may be unrecognizable to casual fans. Nevertheless, each of them shaped how many of us understand the landscape of tournament fishing.
Joe Thomas
Thomas is probably the most recognizable name on this list for casual fans. That’s because he’s still regularly on outdoor television with several namesake programs. He also had a solid tournament career, winning the Red Man All-American and competing in four Bassmaster Classics. However, the most notable aspect of his career was his 1992 collaboration with the late Bassmaster writer Tim Tucker: the book, Diary of a Bass Pro: A Year on the Inside of Fishing’s Fast Track.
It was, as the title suggests, a day-by-day account of Thomas’ time on tour written in the days long before blogs and social media — Mark Zuckerberg was in grade school. Yet Thomas, with the prodding of Tucker, had the foresight to brand himself and to lay bare his efforts.
The idea behind that book was way ahead of its time, and if you talk to writers of my generation – me included – it was the galvanizing moment that brought us to the sport.
Rufus Johnson
Veteran Elite Series pro Mark Menendez told me that Rufus Johnson was the best angler he’d ever fished with, and he’s been in the boat with a pile of them.
But while this pro, who Menendez considered the best, had a decent career, it was largely unremarkable in retrospect. The highlights include a lone Classic appearance and an overtime win over Carl Maxfield in the 1999 Alabama Invitational.
That isn’t meant to diminish Johnson in any way, but rather to show simply how good the best of the best are in this sport. There are guys like Mark Kile and David Kilgore who seemed destined for greatness and chose, for personal reasons, not to pursue a career as a pro, but even the best angler on your local pond, the one who dominates every week, is far from a steel-trap lock at the professional level. The pros are that good, and they seem to get better every year.
Dalton Bobo
Sometimes it’s one cast, one decision, or one uncontrollable variable that determines if a pro will be an immortal or an also-ran. Clearly, Dalton Bobo was an excellent angler. Not only did he win the Federation championship on the Red River, but there’s a spot there that remains known as the “Bobo Hole.”
In his lone Classic appearance in 1997, he had enough weight to win, but a dead fish penalty landed him in second behind Dion Hibdon. He quit his job to fish that Classic, and went on to fish the tour for a few years, but if he hadn’t incurred that penalty and won the Classic (like the better-known Jim Bitter, he had the fish in his hands to do it), perhaps his life would have been much different.
Daniel Keyes
When the internet started gaining traction with the bass fishing set, a few pros developed websites, which were often rudimentary and rarely updated. FLW Tour and Bass Opens pro Daniel Keyes, a member of the Citgo Team, was amongst the first to meaningfully utilize the web to build a brand.
Building on what Joe Thomas had done a decade earlier in print, Keyes and his wife Annie had a no-holds-barred and semi-frequently-updated online journal. While he had some occasional success, the fact that he wasn’t a superstar made it even more poignant.
Ken McIntosh
In 1998, Hall of Famer Denny Brauer had one of the greatest seasons in tournament fishing history, and as he made his way to victory in a Top 150 on the Potomac River, I took note of second-place finisher Ken McIntosh.
Unlike Brauer, who characteristically won by power fishing, McIntosh earned his keepers with finesse.
“I don’t even own any 8-pound line,” Brauer replied, when told what his closest competitor had used. A few years later, deep in the heart of Bubba country at Toledo Bend, Ben Matsubu earned TV time and a third-place finish using 6-pound test.
A few years before most of us knew what a dropshot was — I remember Texas pro David Wharton referring to it as “an upside down catfish rig” that week — the finesse revolution was silently starting.
Norio Tanabe
You probably know that Takahiro Omori was the first international angler to win the Bassmaster Classic in 2004. Almost 20 years later, Jeff Gustafson became the second. This past season, Gussy’s fellow Canadian Chris Johnston became the first to win the Bassmaster Angler of the Year title.
However, Tanabe was the first international angler to win a Bassmaster event back in 1993, when he claimed a trophy at Kentucky Lake. It was tougher back then — there were fewer support systems in place to help a non-native-English speaker and less understanding of the need to encourage anglers from other countries to participate here.
Things came full circle over the past couple of years, not only through the titles earned by Gustafson and Johnston, but also when it became known that Tanabe was mentoring rising superstar Taku Ito.
What It Means to Be a Fan
This sport has had a relatively short history, yet thousands of anglers have cycled through its gates. Each of us as fans, as members of the media, and as competitors have people who live in our memories and who influenced our understanding of tournament angling.
Kevin VanDam, Gerald Swindle, Skeet Reese, Jacob Wheeler, and their ilk get a lot of plaudits and recognition, and rightfully so, but for me, it’s the sometimes-forgotten anglers who fill in the stories.
