VanDam Says This Year's Title Was 'Hardest-Fought'

With each passing year, Kevin VanDam continues to reach what seems unattainable heights. His latest triumph – a third consecutive Toyota Trucks BASS Angler of the Year (AOY) award, which he won as defending Bassmaster Classic champion.

The current AOY format has created a significant controversy

among fans, many of whom feel Skeet Reese should possess the two most recent AOY titles, by virtue of his regular-season points win.

But no matter which side of the argument one takes, there's no denying VanDam is the fiercest competitor in the sport today. He never gives up and when the pressure's on, he seems to perform that much better.

BassFan caught up with VanDam after he arrived back home with the trophy in hand. Here's what he had to say about the title win in Montgomery, Ala..

BassFan: You said last week that each title you win means more than the one before it. Do you really mean that? Was this the sweetest title yet?

VanDam: Yes, because I think it was the hardest-fought one. Back in the day, there were times when the last event wasn't even over and it's already done. So this is just a very intense format. And to me, it was going to be a longshot going into it to even have a chance at all.

We all knew what we were signing up for and we did it last year the same way. But I was stunned after the first week (at Jordan). You know that mathematically you have a shot, but you don't expect it to work out like that.

It was definitely a huge thrill for me and my family to come out of there with a win. Especially because throughout the season, everyone was saying, 'Hey, what's wrong with KVD?' But in my mind, I didn't think there was anything wrong with me.

The heat in Montgomery was downright dangerous. Was that the most physically taxing event you've ever fished?

Both of the post-season events were the toughest I've ever fished, based on that heat. I understand that in Vegas is can be 110, but doggone – the heat index was 110 to 120 down there with the humidity. At launch in the morning, everyone was just drenched with sweat. It was unbelievable. It was the hottest tournament I've ever fished for sure, and the last day of (Montgomery) was the worst by far.

You're trying to keep your mental focus through it all, and for me, the way I fish – fast, covering water, cranking and making thousands of casts – it's tough. I drank a ton of water, a ton of Gatorade, vitamin water. You just couldn't get enough.

Did BASS allow you guys to get in the water if need be?

The way the rules read, you can basically do whatever you need to for an emergency. If you're looking at heat stroke, or your cameraman's in bad shape and you need to do something, you have to do something. I wanted to jump in so bad, but remember that the water temperature in the lake was like 94 degrees.

BASS touts you as owning six AOY titles, but certainly BassFan recognizes your 2001 FLW Tour AOY, which gives you seven – two short of Roland Martin's nine. Is that FLW title something you take a lot of pride in?

I'm proud of winning it there. It's a top-level tour too, so yeah. But nobody really looks at a lot of those things like that. And the two years we had the Elite 50s, I won the (points) for both of those. Nobody talks about that either. But I remember it.

All I do every time I go out to compete is to give it my all. I love the competition, and I love the camaraderie with the anglers we have in our sport. I think it's one of the things that makes our sport special, and you don't see it in other sports. I can tell you – NBA players, NFL, if they're on different teams they're not going out and eating dinner with each other.

And it goes across the tours. It's disappointing to me that I don't get to see a lot of the guys I started out with. Larry (Nixon's) now on the FLW Tour, and Tommy (Martin) and George (Cochran). Those are guys I fished with for years. They're friends of mine and I don't get to see them much. And there are a lot of new guys on the FLW Tour. I got to talk to some of them at the ICAST show.

That's what makes some of the other events fun, like the Texas Bass Classic and PAA – where you see guys from both tours fishing against each other.

But to get back to your question, yeah, there's no win that you ever want to take for granted. It doesn't matter if it's the Open level, or the Stren (now AFS) level. Even those are big-time events. And when you win one, you can say you competed against some top-level fishermen and you were the best that week.

You mention the PAA. For a long time you were the face of the sport in terms of being the top athlete. Then you became the voice of the sport when you served as PAA president immediately after the association re-formed. Lately, though, you're back to KVD the athlete. Is that by design?

For me, the amount of commitments I have for sponsors, and to my family and kids – Jackson and Nicholas are 13 now – it takes a huge time commitment just to be on the board of the PAA, or even the advisory board to BASS. I'd been doing it a long time. It's really important to me – the future of the sport – and I want to be able to voice my opinion. But it got to the point for me where it was just too much. I just couldn't handle all the commitments I had.

And I'm not going to sacrifice my family for fishing. I can tell you right now: Competing out here and winning a Classic or AOY is a big deal, but none of that compares to my family. I'm not going to sacrifice them. They've sacrificed enough for me, I wouldn't put that in jeopardy for my career.

Talk a little bit, if you would, about how you won the Montgomery leg, and a little about what you did at Jordan too.

It was really two weeks of fishing, and definitely fishing there the year before helped a lot. Conditions were a lot different this time, but I knew the lay of the land and the water, and I just fished my strengths.

Both weeks, every fish I weighed in came cranking. At Jordan I caught everything on a Strike King 6XD. I was fishing for spotted bass and fishing deep, offshore ridges on the river itself, and main-lake points and humps in 15 to 25 feet with that big crank.

Then at the river, it was considerably lower than the year before – 3 or 4 feet lower from last year to this year. That really told me the fish would be concentrated more. And from what I saw in practice, there were groups of fish on some of the main-river bars and creekmouths and things like that.

I had a really good practice on the river but the tournament was a lot tougher. The first day I had one of those schools I found in practice, and it paid off. I caught two 4-plus-pounders back-to-back cranking a main-river point. I caught a good limit there and ended up with 15 pounds. That really spring-boarded me into having a good tournament. The next day I did the same thing, but that school was gone and I fished all different levels – deep and shallow.

Every fish I caught on the river was on a Series 5 or the new Strike King KVD square-bill shallow-runner that we have. Actually, I probably caught the majority on the shallow-runner, but I caught those two big ones on the Series 5. I was throwing sexy shad patterns.

What really helped was just knowing we'd catch that little bit of current in the afternoon each day. And I put all my eggs in one basket and fished my style. I cranked and cranked and sooner or later I'd hit them. The tough thing was to get the quality bites, and when you got them, you had to capitalize. For 2 weeks guys said they lost this fish or that fish. I used the Mustad KVD trebles and over the 2 weeks I never lost a bass.