It only makes sense that bass fishing's greatest championship comes to one of the sport's best fisheries. So, in 2014 the Bassmaster Classic will be held on Alabama's Lake Guntersville for the first time in 38 years! Things have changed a lot since then, a lot of water has passed through the milfoil and a lot of history has been made.
The 2014 Bassmaster Classic will be the 44th in championship history and the second on Lake Guntersville. The first was in 1976. That Classic was much different from what will take place in 2014. For starters, the 1976 competitors didn't know knew the destination until B.A.S.S. founder Ray Scott had loaded them onto a plane and they were airborne.
Commentators on those early Classics were often heard to complain that no "big names" ever won the championship. They were hoping for a victory by Bill Dance, Roland Martin or Tom Mann ... and they never came. What they failed to realize was that the Classic would create its own superstars, like Rick Clunn who won his first Classic in 1976 on Lake Guntersville.
That Classic was historic in several particulars. For one, it was the last of the "mystery lake" Classics. After Guntersville, everyone would know where the championship was taking place well in advance. That allowed fans and media to make plans to attend, and it allowed anglers to better prepare.
The 1976 Classic on Guntersville was the most productive in history to that point. Rick Clunn's winning weight of 59 pounds, 15 ounces wouldn't be bested for eight years (when he would break his own record on the Arkansas River). His Day 2 catch weighing 33-5 is still the heaviest ever, though the creel limit was 10 bass back then.
When Day 2 of the 1976 Classic dawned, it was just 30 degrees in Guntersville. That was the coldest day in Classic history to that point, and that record held until 2009 when it was 28 degrees on the Red River out of Shreveport, La. Every morning of the 1976 Classic was below freezing — making it the coldest Classic in history.
Guntersville is one of just seven lakes to produce Century Club catches — over 100 pounds in four days of fishing with a five-bass creel limit — and it's done it five times. The first time it cracked the mark was at the 2009 Bassmaster Elite Series event when Aaron Martens, Skeet Reese, Kevin VanDam and Michael Iaconelli all broke triple digits.
Martens won that tournament with 107-8, putting an exclamation point on the statement that Guntersville is one of the finest bass lakes in the world. Reese was second with 104-4, followed by KVD (102-3) and Ike (101-1), in a star-studded top four.
Guntersville produced another Century Club entry a year later when Skeet Reese won the Elite event there with 100-13. It marked the fifth time an angler broke 100 pounds on the lake. Only four other bodies of water have posted more Century Club entries (Falcon, Clear, Amistad and Santee Cooper).
Big catches on Guntersville are common. In 2004, two-time Classic champ George Cochran won a Bassmaster Tour event with 99-10. That's about as close to 100 pounds as you can get.
A year later, Zell Rowland won the Bassmaster Tour stop on Guntersville with a four-day catch of 20 bass weighing 87-0. What may be most impressive is that he caught them in a variety of ways using lots of different baits, from topwater to flippin' and pitching.
The 1976 Classic was also historic because of the size of the bass it featured. On Day 2 of that championship, Rick Clunn came to the scales with a 7-13 that anchored his 33-5 limit. It was the biggest bass in Classic history to that point ... for a few minutes.
Then Ricky Green came to the scales with this bass. It weighed 8-9, eclipsing Clunn's lunker and going into the Classic record books as the biggest in championship history. Green was an early B.A.S.S. star known as "Mr. Consistency." He qualified for 14 straight Classics between 1972 and 1985.
Green's 8-9 lunker from Guntersville stood as the biggest in Classic history for 30 years! It was surpassed in 2006 when the championship was held on Florida's Kissimmee Chain of Lakes. Green's bass struck a Strike King spinnerbait.
Lake Guntersville is the second most visited fishery in B.A.S.S. tournament history. The 2014 Bassmaster Classic will be our 22nd professional level tournament there. Only Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas has hosted more with 32. The first B.A.S.S. event on Guntersville was the 1976 Classic.
In 1992, Larry Nixon became the first angler in B.A.S.S. history to surpass the $1 million mark in tournament earnings, and he did it at the 1992 Megabucks event on Lake Guntersville. Nixon finished fourth at that tournament. It would be three years before another angler would join the Millionaire's Club.
In 2006, Michael Iaconelli rode the momentum of his Elite Series win on Guntersville to a Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year title.
In 2007, Guntersville was the site of Kevin VanDam's first Bassmaster Elite Series win. He's earned five more blue trophies since then.
Lake Guntersville has been center stage for lots of other bass history, too. In October of 2011, Paul Elias won a tournament on Guntersville with an obscure device called "the Alabama rig." Since then, castable umbrella rigs have popped up everywhere. You won't see them at the 2014 Classic, though. They're against the rules of Classic competition.
