Reflections on a Grand Bassmaster Classic
Plenty of fish, great personal stories, a little controversy and a Grand Lake that could become even grander
The Bassmaster Classic waxed nostalgic, brought us excitement and a little controversy, and, as always, gave us a great and unpredictable winner.
You missed out if you thought the Classic was just another dull televised fishing contest. Like any high-stakes competition, it involves life achievements on an incredible scale, historic community ties, and individual stories that range from pure wackiness to heart-rending.
The teenager in me got a lump in his throat when they pulled Rick Clunn up on stage to honor his 50th year with Bassmaster. The Hall of Famer (2001) is still going strong and will fish his 500th tourney this season. Always a class act, Clunn encouraged everyone to love the sport and find common ground.
I lost track of BASS when I moved to Alaska for 23 years, but when I moved back to Oklahoma and started covering Bassmaster Clunn’s name, it made me feel like I wasn’t wholly lost coming back.
Every older angler in the place could measure their life’s outdoor journey against a lengthy calendar of noting Rick Clunn's accomplishments. I was taken in. I didn’t even think of shooting a photo.
But we can all always count on Seigo Saito with BASS.
Tulsa and BASS go way back, all the way back to when an Alabama insurance salesman named Ray Scott met a Tulsa lumberyard and tackle-shop owner named Don T. Butler and a Tulsa Tribune outdoor writer named Bob Cobb.
On Sunday, Bassmaster emcee Dave Mercer told the BOK Center crowd about Scott, who passed away in May 2022, his pioneering spirit that gave birth to national-level competition bass fishing, popularized catch-and-release, and had untold impacts on everyday anglers worldwide.
He also announced that the Bassmaster Classic trophy had been renamed the Ray Scott Trophy, darkened the venue, and led the crowd to illuminate the venue in his memory.
I spoke with Scott before the 2013 Classic. He was thrilled that the Classic was finally coming to Oklahoma, especially Tulsa.
"I have warm feelings for Tulsa," said the BASS founder. "There was always something about Tulsa. Don (Butler), of course, is a huge part of that ... The Classic being in Tulsa this year is great because it's kind of a birthplace of BASS."
Of our three Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees Bassmaster Classics, only 2016 made sense to me: the dirty water, pre-spawn, Park Hill’s Jason Christie in the lead, and Talala pro Edwin Evers hanging on in third place. And then Evers hits the Elk River and blows everyone out of the water to win with a total of 60 pounds 7 ounces.
Only Evers and Christie, in second place with 50-2, had totals over 50 pounds that week.
And this year? A winner from Alabama only starting his third year as a pro, with one Classic under his belt and not a single first-place trophy to his name (until now), becomes only the tenth angler in Classic history to lead the tourney wire-to-wire.
I guess he was saving up his winner’s luck for the big one.
Justin Hamner of Northport, Alabama, ended up with 58-3.
Second place went to Adam Rasmussen, a true Classic rookie—but a long-experienced walleye fishing guide—from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. With 55-4, he was one of four anglers this time with Grand Lake totals over 50 pounds.
A Wisconsin walleye guide in Oklahoma!
Back in 2013, for our first Classic, I wrote a fair amount about Christie being the new hot FLW Tour transfer and likely favored on the lake he’d been beating anglers on for years. Christie made a good showing, but somehow, during a Classic that was colder than a Minnesota well-digger’s gizzard, Cliff Pace rolled up here from Ovett, Mississippi, to slow-drag a deep jig and beat everyone. It was a tough tourney, though, and he won with a total of 54-12.
Idaho angler Brandon Palaniuk worked crankbaits to a close second and the only other bag over 50 pounds, with 51-8.
I felt terrible for Christie in 2013, but he made a pretty good showing, not bad for his first Classic. In 2016, as Christie said, Evers just plain won; there was no beating that final-day bag. I was on deadline this time and hated the idea of interrupting his dinner at the Media Center dinner to talk, even briefly, to do the “what happened” questions.
He fished all three days. That’s not a bad Classic, but the fans and anglers always want the win.
“I went fishin’ for bigguns today; I just didn’t find ‘em,” he said. “I just never got really dialed in.”
It made me think back to a story my friend Ken Duke wrote to counter all the local hype around Grand that year; “The Curse of the Bassmaster Classic Local.” Since the first Classic in 1970, only Boyd Duckett had won on his home lake, and that was in 2007, he reminded us.
With 2013 in the books, the Classic had 43 years with only one home-state winner.
But in 2014, Randy Howell, From Springville, Ala., became the second angler to win the Classic in his home state. Then, in 2015, Casey Ashley, a South Carolina native, came from behind to win on his home waters of Lake Hartwell. Then, we all know what happened in 2016.
There wasn’t much talk about The Curse after that. Heck, Alabama angler Jordan Lee won at Birmingham in 2018, and Ott DeFoe of Knoxville, Tennessee, kept the local winner ball rolling in 2019 in his hometown.
But DeFoe was the last local to win a Classic. In 2023, Jeff “Gussy” Gustafson rolled down out of the woods around Kenora, Ontario, to dominate on DeFoe’s home waters and become the first Canadian to win a Classic.
A Canadian wins it in Tennessee!
So now we’ve gone five years without a local winner.
Maybe the curse is back.
Has everyone heard enough about Forward Facing Sonar yet?
Well, I’m sure we will all see plenty about FFS, Livescope, and “scoping,” however you want to label it before it’s over.
The new technology has become a problem for organized bass fishing, a PR problem, if nothing else. The social media trolls jump on the Classic, naturally.
As a fan and outdoor communicator, I think it’s great that folks debate its use. It’s an important topic. But we all need to remember that social media is where ethics and sportsmanship tend to die, and we must resist our inner demons at the keyboard.
Throwing jabs at winners is low-class. Watching a young man achieve his life’s dream and then writing things like “we never woulda heard of this kid if not for FFS” or “winning the Classic using FFS is like winning the Masters from the ladies’ tees” helps nothing and no one. OK, the Master’s one is kind of clever, but seriously, who wants to get involved in a sport where people trash-talk their champions that way?
No, thank you.
Keep the debate on the topic, not on attacking people’s accomplishments. Hamner won a fair fight. If he won the tourney mainly due to FFS, the others lost it the same way. They all had FFS-equipped boats. They used everything out there. Jigs and spinners, crankbaits, and swimbaits hit the water; a few came to the bag on surface bites Friday. It was by no means a FFS-dominated tournament.
Hamner’s main winning bait was a Yo-Zuri Hardcore Minnow Flat 110SP. He used a larger deep diver along creek bluffs and a smaller shallow runner around brush piles. That’s a pretty predictable winning bait for pre-spawn bass.
If FFS is so magical, how is it that Hamner had yet to win a tournament before the Classic? Sure, it played a role out there this weekend, so did side-scan, down-imaging, and guys running their boats 75 mph to reach a GPS dot on a map.
There is a line where technology raises ethical dilemmas; maybe we’re pushing it with live scoping. It needs discussion, not acrimony.
Fifty-six anglers hit Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees for the 54th annual Classic. And on Day One of that 2024 Bassmaster Classic presented by Jockey Outdoors, all but two anglers brought five fish to the stage. One angler was skunked, and one brought in two fish.
That’s a good showing for Grand Lake. It is a healthy fishery.
Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation Regional Fisheries Supervisor Brad Johnston said the overall catch was 668 fish with an average weight just shy of 3 pounds per fish. The biggest fish, caught by the youngest angler in Classic history, was 6 pounds 12 ounces.
“It would have been nice to see a 7 (pounder), but we came close,” Johnston said.
Biologists have rolled 7-pound bass while electro-fishing, but they stay on the safe side with that electrical current, so he said those giants don’t always roll up, he said.
Grand still has a chance to grow more giant bass. It has groceries with its densely populated shad. Florida-strain bass genetics from stocked pure-Florida brooders and the Tiger Bass fingerling program are out there—somewhere.
Some hybrid largemouths may have appeared in the Classic, but no one would know without a genetic test.
Johnston said genetic testing begins this spring to determine whether Florida strain and hybrid genes are being passed along. Still, he cautioned, this is a long-term study, and we’re only three years into a 10-year program.
Grand is also in the rotation for creel surveys this spring, which will give us more to discuss about Grand when those results are compiled later this year.
While fish averaged 3 pounds, many had bags with 4- or 5-pound anchors and several keepers to complete bags of 11 or 12 pounds. The preponderance of smaller fish raises questions about heavy fishing pressure and the catch-and-release culture at Grand.
It will take time for people to reconsider the idea of keeping bass on a stringer for dinner, but it needs to happen. Anglers can keep six black bass daily, with only one over 16 inches.
“Keeping fish is only going to help, but it will take a long time for people to take off with that; it’s been so ingrained in people for so long that bass is a catch-and-release fish,” Johnston said.
Grand also hosts dozens of tournaments all year long, all targeting the biggest bass to stuff in the live well and haul to the weigh-in.
It stands to reason that when anglers toss back the little ones, and the ones most often bagged and most often stressed are the bigger fish, the most human-caused mortality–even if it is limited–will be among those larger fish, especially when water conditions are less than ideal.
That’s something to think about. There are plenty of bass in Grand Lake, but wouldn’t raising the average fish weight to 4 pounds instead of 3 be beneficial?
Confetti: The Bassmaster Classic always ends with tons and tons of confetti. If you’re a photographer or writer doing the quick on-and-off-the-floor gig between interviews in the Media Center and running back out to the floor to click the shutter, getting that prime center-stage shot from up on the photo platform is a no-go.
The place gets packed. Everyone in front of the stage stands up for the finale, and making it to the stands requires an elevator ride and a long run. I jumped out of the center arena into the truck lane for a clear view.
Every Bassmaster Classic champion reacts differently when first holding the (now named) Ray Scott Trophy. Confetti bathes the angler in a curtain that isolates them from the crowd for a few seconds.
I thought sharing the view through my lens would be a fun way to wrap up this Classic. So, here are the 45 images just as I saw it happen through my Canon 1DX with a 300mm F2.8 lens, hand-held (32000 iso, f/8, 3200th/sec) as I played "where's the angler” and framed, focused, and pulsed the continuous shutter (12 frames per second) with the hope for a clear photo of Hamner’s face through the confetti.
The last frame catches it.