Today at the ICAST industry tradeshow in Las Vegas, Nev., B.A.S.S. released results of its Toyota Trucks All-Star Week fan balloting.
Voters chose Mike Iaconelli, Aaron Martens, Jeff Kriet and Skeet Reese.
At the same time, 12 finalists in the Toyota Trucks Fan Favorites sweepstakes were "virtually paired" with the pros for a chance to win a bass boat valued at $30,000. When the All-Star champion is crowned July 31, the fan paired with him will win a Triton 18XS bass boat with a Mercury 150 OptiMax engine. All 12 finalists will win a tackle pack from Berkley and Havoc.
The names of the 12 fan finalists and their pairings will be announced after all are contacted by B.A.S.S.
Over 3 weeks, 31,482 registered voters cast more than half a million votes at Bassmaster.com. Fans were permitted to vote once a day in each of four regions.
To get the vote, many of the 91 Elite anglers in the race actively campaigned. Most tapped heavily into social media and email blasts.
The closest race was in Region 2, where Missouri's Denny Brauer led from June 21-30 until Kriet overtook him July 1 and held the lead until the polls closed July 10. Kriet edged out Brauer by 551 votes, garnering 17.8% of Region 2 votes to Brauer's 17.4%. Rick Clunn of Missouri was third in Region 2 with 10.3% of the vote.
"I'm very surprised and humbled that I got as many votes as I did," Kriet said. "It means a lot to me that people would take the time to vote for me. There were a lot of really, really good fishermen in my region."
Results in the other three regions were not as tight. In Region 1, Iaconelli pulled 26.5% of the vote, easily passing two Elite pros from Florida – Shaw Grigsby with 15.3% and Bobby Lane, who had 7.1%.
Region 3 winner Martens collected 16.6% of his region's vote. Second was Alabama's Tim Horton with 9.5% and third was Louisiana's Greg Hackney with 8.6%.
Reese's 23.4% in Region 4 showed a wide margin over Alton Jones of Texas, who ended with 13.4%, and Brandon Palaniuk of Idaho with 11.3%.
