Zona’s final take on Elite season

SEASON HAD DRAMA ALONG WITH CATASTROPHE

There were great victories by great anglers during the 2016 Bassmaster Elite Series, and while most were remarkable in one sense or another, none will be the season’s top remembrance, Mark Zona said.

The year kicked off with Edwin Evers rallying behind a monster final day bag to win the GEICO Bassmaster Classic. Another special victory came as Rick Clunn, at 69 years old, won his 15th B.A.S.S. tournament, the Elite season opener on the St. Johns River.

Then there were interesting occurrences in the next three events; Britt Myers captured his first title in his home state; Randall Tharp won in a dual-venue tournament; and Takahiro Omori milked a spot to a title.

Heavyweights Kevin VanDam and Greg Hackney posted victories to secure Classic berths, (KVD actually had a record three wins on the year) and Justin Lucas, Ott DeFoe and Seth Feider reeled off victories to close the season.

“This year has just been a year of really, really, historical finishes,” Zona said. “The anglers who won tournaments during the Elite Series, they’re all highly respected, class-act anglers. Those guys are all the pinnacle of a professional angler.”

Zona didn’t pick any event winners as he did the previous year in getting “extremely lucky,” but he did pick KVD and Hackney to win events, so he was kinda close. He said there were some unusual things not normally seen.

“A lot of years, you see a lot of trends and techniques win, but this year has been so all over the map,” he said. “An odd thing about this year, a lot of the guys who won, after Days 1 or 2 they will let out that he had a great practice. We didn’t really have that.

“I think next year is going to have a lot of the same flavor as we had this year, as far as how tournaments are kind of won. It will be a really favorable season for the shallow water guys yet again.”

Gerald Swindle was the benefactor of that as he finished atop the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year point standings for the second time. Zona said he had noticed something different in Swindle’s demeanor.

“This year was a way different Gerald Swindle than I have every covered in the last 12 years,” he said. “I hate to say it, because I don’t want this to sound the wrong way, but he can be a little bit of a basket case. Oh, he’s always in the top 20, but I’ve always said Gerald Swindle’s worst enemy is himself.”

A balky knee late in the year became Swindle’s worst pain, as postseason surgery created a scenario that required an emergency fasciotomy, a lengthy hospital stay and longer recovery. See story here.

Alongside Swindle, another story involved Rookie of the Year Drew Benton. Zona said he proved all the “geniuses, or lack thereof, wrong — that he not only catches them in the Southeast, that dude has chops everywhere. He’s here for a long time.”

The final and more everlasting storyline involved Hackney, who led the AOY battle before having his Day 1 catch disqualified at Cayuga.

“You can look back and say Edwin, Rick Clunn and KVD, and Swindle and Seth Feider there at the end,” Zona said. “Last year, the story of the year was Aaron Martens — there was very little else.

“I think the final story of the year is Greg Hackney. He is one of my closest friends on earth, and you take away one tournament — this is no offense to Gerald Swindle — and he could have become a two-time AOY winner. It’s just a day, not only Greg Hackney will remember, all of us that follow the sport will.”

Nearly everyone involved in the sport was pretty much sick that the lead for the most prestigious title outside of a Classic was lost in such a manner. Hackney was 30 points ahead of Swindle heading into Cayuga. New York law prohibits fishing in manmade areas, and Hackney’s catch was disqualified after he inadvertently fished in the Cornell Sailing Center. The DQ left him in 107th place, and Swindle finished 10th to take the AOY lead.

“I don’t like getting ahead at the expense of somebody else’s misfortune,” Swindle told Alan McGuckin at the time for this story. “I just can’t imagine how Hackney’s feeling.”

Like many, Zona was dumbfounded when he learned of Hackney’s fate. Hackney had actually weighed in 17 pounds, 8 ounces to stand 36th — he had won the last time the Elites visited Cayuga — and looked to add nine points to his lead over Swindle, who was 45th.

In preparing for the next morning’s Bassmaster LIVE, Zona was perusing the standings again and couldn’t find Hackney. He watched him weigh in a decent bag, then finally found his name at the end of the standings.

“I stared at it. There’s a misprint,” he said. “Then I got a text, ‘Why does Hackney have a zero?’ Then another. And another. Then somebody said there’s been an infraction. I kept saying, there’s no way that friggin’ happened.

“This is the only thing I really connect that to — when the Seahawks passed the ball at the 1-yard line in the Super Bowl in the last 10 seconds and got intercepted.”

At the time, Zona said if Hackney doesn’t rally to win, he might very well have just lost the $100,000 AOY winner’s purse and as much if not more in sponsor incentives.

VanDam said he experienced a similar tragedy in 2007. For allowing his co-angler to operate his boat during practice, KVD  was disqualified from the Santee-Cooper event. The points he missed out on cost him what might have been an eighth AOY title.

Although long scarred over, KVD suffered from that wound but never harped on it. Don’t expect any different for Hackney. But it’s the type of thing most competitors never completely shake.

“It’s funny, every time I’m around him, every time I look at him, I think about it,” Zona said. “How can you get past it?”

That’s why it’s Zona’s big takeaway storyline of 2016.

“This is no slight to anybody — that’s the one thing I will remember for years … because it was so shocking,” he said. “You take away all the memories of this year, that’s the one I will remember above and beyond 20 years from now.”