BassFans know Bill Siemantel as co-author of the Big Bass Zone. But did you know he runs a Bass Cat? And did you know that he originally got hooked up with Bass Cat when he traveled halfway across the country and beat a 750-boat field? Here's how it went down back in 2000.
"At the time, I was running a Fisher aluminum boat and doing really well in tournaments here in the West," Siemantel said. "A friend of mine was buying a Bass Cat – (Bass Cat owner) Rick Pierce sold him his Jaguar. We went back to Arkansas to pick it up, and we were there right during the time of the 2000 Bass Cat Owners Tournament."
When the duo arrived in Mountain Home, Ark., they toured the Bass Cat facility (the Pierces open the factory and headquarters to owners during the tournament). Founder Ron Pierce brought Siemantel into his office and the two got to chatting. They talked about big fish, and perused Siemantel's big-fish photo album.
Rick and Ron soon asked Siemantel: "What can we do to get you into a Bass Cat?" Siemantel didn't have a lot of money, but they worked out a deal. Here's what Siemantel said about it. "Ron told me, 'You know what Bill? We're going to get you a deal on that boat, and you're going to go out there and run it on the West Coast. We don't have a lot of guys out there, so promote us as best you can and we'll go from there.'"
It was a handshake deal and they got the boat ordered. The next day, Siemantel and his partner entered the Owners Tournament. "We fished in my buddy's new boat, and we won it," he said. "There were around 750 teams, and I think we were the only team that caught a limit each day. It was on Norfork Lake, and we'd never been to the lake, but we took some western tactics there.
"At that time, we'd already been doing the dropshot for quite a while, so we took Roboworms and hit the main-lake outside points. We ended up winning another Jaguar."
Siemantel still fishes out of that original boat he purchased in 2000, and still appreciates the way the Pierces do business. "The handshake is worth any signature you could put down on paper," he noted. "And they're fun people – the kind you can just sit down and talk with. It's hard to get that nowadays because there's so much politics in the industry."
> For more information about Bass Cat boats, click here. To learn about the Bass Cat Owners National Team Championship, which will be held Nov. 8–11 at Alabama's Lake Neely Henry, click here.
