There have been some unforgettable moments in nearly a half-century of Bassmaster Classics, from Bryan Kerchal winning the 1994 tournament as an amateur, to living legends Rick Clunn and Kevin VanDam each locking up four titles in the sport’s showcase event.
Arizona pro Steve Lund has only fished in one Classic. He finished third from last in that event held on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell in February 2015. Still, Lund is linked to the Classic brand after his boat froze to its trailer when he tried launching into Hartwell on a frigid morning to start the 45th Bassmaster Classic.
“Every time I’m in a B.A.S.S. tournament, it comes up,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a pretty funny story now, but that morning, it was no fun at all.”
Temperatures at Hartwell on Feb. 20, 2015, were in the single-digits when anglers gathered to begin the tournament. Some boats slid easily into the icy water, but when it was Lund’s turn to launch, his bass boat wouldn’t budge.
“Everyone was trying to rock the boat,” he said recently. “Then we were trying to back the boat down and slam on the breaks to try and break it free from the trailer. The nose kept holding, so we were checking to see if the nose hook was undone. The back of the boat was floating, but then I looked down and could tell the trailer and the boat were frozen together up front.
“The water temperature dropped from about 54 degrees when we showed up the week before to I think 39 degrees when we started the tournament. And the air temperature was like 8 degrees. I had heater pads in my shoes, warmers in my gloves. I had so much gear on, but I never got cold. I felt really bad for my Marshal, though, when we were going 72 miles an hour across the lake.”
Such cold-weather encounters are relatively new to the Bassmaster Classic, which has been held in the winter only since 2006 when the Elite Series began.
From its inaugural outing in 1971 until 1983, the Classic was held in the fall. It became a summer event in 1984, and the difference in the catch was immediately noticeable. Clunn won the third of his four Classics that year with a record 75-9 haul on the Arkansas River, though anglers could weigh seven bass per day at that time.
Finding bass that active in the throes of summer is a rarity, however, and the weights in summer Classics plummeted. In fact, only two of the next 21 champions caught more than 50 pounds, and the last of that bunch — VanDam in 2005 in Pittsburgh — set a record for the lowest winning weight in a Classic, 12-15 over three days.
By that point, B.A.S.S. was looking to hype its brand-new Elite Series and having its signature event kick off the season was part of the plan. It was a strategy similar to what NASCAR did when it made the Daytona 500 its season opener in 1982.
The first winter Classic was held in 2006 on Lake Tohopekaliga in central Florida and Luke Clausen sent the bar skyrocketing with a three-day winning total of 56-2. The limit was five bass per day by that point.
There’s no doubt making the Classic a cold-weather event has made the overall weights consistently heavier. Since Clausen’s win, the average winning weight has been 54.7 pounds. In the 35 Classics prior to 2006, the winning angler only amassed that total five times: Clunn’s 59-15 in 1976 and his record catch of 75-9 in 1984, Bo Dowden’s 54-10 in 1980, Robert Hamilton Jr.’s 59-6 in 1992, and Davy Hite’s 55-10 in 1999.
Having the showcase event in winter, however, makes oddball happenings such as boats freezing to trailers a possibility. Hot coffee has been used to free icy trolling motors, and wet fishing gear ices between casts in extreme conditions like those on Hartwell in 2015.
Mark Menendez, who will compete in his sixth Classic in March, finished 33rd in the 2006 tournament on Toho. Previously, he fought August heat in three Classics — on Alabama’s Logan Martin Lake in 1997 and the Louisiana Delta in 2001 and 2003 — and he qualified for a winter Classic on Alabama’s Lay Lake in 2010.
Menendez said there are benefits and drawbacks to fishing in any season, so competitors have to adapt if they want to continue competing in big-ticket events like the Classic.
“I won my first Bassmaster event, a Top 100 on the Tennessee River, and it was cold,” Menendez said. “But I grew up on Kentucky Lake, and I like fishing offshore (in warm weather) too. I’m equally adept at both, I think, but if I had to pick, I’d pick colder weather because there are fewer people fishing when it’s cold.”
Steve Bowman of JM Associates has covered the Bassmaster Classic for more than 30 years, and he said moving the tournament to winter was a game-changer for the sport.
“I can remember when a 3- or 4-pounder in the Classic was a big bass,” he said. “Then we go to 2006, and Clunn catches a 10-pounder on Day 1 (and Preston Clark had an 11-10 the same day). That’s been a trend. We’ve seen bigger fish being caught … When we were on the James River from 1988 to 1990, a 9-pound bag was a good bag.”
Still, Bowman said catching bigger fish is not the prime mover for staging the Classic in winter.
“Having it earlier opened up the game,” he said. “The Classics I started covering in the 80s, the anglers would be talking about when they were going dove hunting in a few weeks. You hold the Classic early, and they’re talking about fishing because the season is in front of them. That ramped things up in a big way for the competitors, and the fans followed that excitement.”
Trey Reid has covered numerous Classics in the past 20 years. He knows that cold-weather tournaments can be hard not only on the anglers, but also on media and spectators who follow the pros regardless of the conditions. He said the 2013 Classic on Grand Lake in Oklahoma was bitterly cold, too, but that nothing compares to the frigid climes on Hartwell in 2015.
“We froze our butts off,” Reid said. “We were out there on the water for a few hours waiting on the anglers to arrive because the start was delayed on Day 1. I had on multiple layers … and still when you’re running across the lake, it feels like someone is driving a spike through your forehead. It’s the coldest I’ve ever been.”
The 2020 Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk is scheduled for March 6-8 on Lake Guntersville in Alabama. It’s too early to accurately predict weather for that tournament, but Menendez said he’ll deal with whatever Mother Nature presents.
“Win, lose or draw, it’s just a relief to be in this field after not being in the Classic since 2010,” he said. “I’m not looking back. I’m going to push the envelope to be in contention on the third day, whether it’s 100 degrees on Guntersville, or 10 below.”