Evers, Clunn, VanDam Stole The Show Early On

By BassFan Staff

It’s been said anglers are like elephants – they don’t forget anything. Whether it was a willow bush in the back of a pocket that produced an 8-pounder 15 years ago or that time their buddy forgot to put the plug in his boat, fishermen are adept at remembering the most minuscule of details.

The 2016 tournament season provided countless memorable occurrences, dramatic storylines and plot twists along with moments of sheer elation and others that gave us pause.

There were no stories of sheer domination like what Ray Hanselman and Aaron Martens provided us in 2015, but the 2016 season was highlighted by the Return of the Jedi with Rick Clunn’s unexpected win at the St. Johns River Elite Series in March. Not to be outdone, Kevin VanDam broke out of his winless funk with two full-field victories and another win at the made-for-the-Internet Classic Bracket event in July.

The marquee events also lived up to their reputation for producing some thrilling theater. Back at Grand Lake for the second time in four years, the Bassmaster Classic came down to a day-3 duel between Oklahoma natives and close friends Jason Christie and Edwin Evers. Christie held the lead after days 1 and 2, but Evers made a shrewd move on the final day and ran up the Elk River, where he blasted 29-03 to win his first Classic by 10 pounds.

Speaking of strong comebacks, the Angler of the Year race on both the FLW Tour and Elite Series featured two veterans returning to the top after either a slow start (in the case of Andy Morgan) or a miserable 2015 season (in the case of Gerald Swindle.

Morgan shook off two finishes in the 40s to start the year to reel off four straight finishes of 13th or higher to capture his record-tying third career AOY crown.

For Swindle, a 43rd-place finish in points in 2015 left him out of the Classic for only the second time since 2003. He rebounded with a remarkable campaign that featured six top-12 finishes, including four straight to close the regular season.

In August, John Cox took his aluminum Crestliner to the farthest reaches of Wheeler Lake and became the first angler to win the Forrest Wood Cup out of a tin boat.

The BassFan staff has highlighted 10 memorable moments/events from the past 12 months and we’ll spend today and tomorrow breaking them down in chronological order. You may disagree with what did or didn't make the cut. As always, we’d like to hear your thoughts (send us Feedback here).

A Classic Finish

Evers hauled just four fish out of Grand Lake on day 1 of this year’s Classic. Despite catching 13-12, which put him in 13th place, seven pounds behind Christie, he wasn’t throwing in the towel.

“I think it’ll be a little better tomorrow,” he said after day 1. “I’m going to make a few adjustments and I may go 180 degrees in the other direction. I see a lot of fish out there. I just can’t catch them.”

He bounced back with a 17-08 stringer on day 2 to move up to 3rd place, but still faced a 6-pound, 5-ounce deficit to Christie with perennial Classic top-10 finisher Todd Faircloth between them in 2nd.

The final day of the ’16 Classic will go down as one of the most improbable single days in Classic history. Rather than stick with what had worked on days 1 and 2, Evers made the decision to run up the Elk River to a stretch he’d checked in practice, but hadn’t been back to since. Meanwhile, Christie continued with this heavy spinnerbait pattern, which was starting to fizzle out.

With the wind blowing out of the preferred direction for Evers, he proceeded to stick 29-03 and triggered a 16-plus pound swing on the leaderboard as he produced the heaviest final-day bag ever caught by a Classic winner.

His victory was a popular one with the Tulsa crowd and it touched off a year that saw the typically-reserved Evers do countless live broadcasts through his social media as he looked to capitalize on his Classic win.

In The Rick of Time

Two weeks after Evers’ historic Classic win, the man with four Classic titles to his name showed everyone that age is just a number as 69-year-old Rick Clunn became the oldest man to win an Elite Series tournament by capturing the season opener at the St. Johns River.

After day 2, Clunn was roughly 8 pounds behind leader Greg Hackney. His family was traveling to Florida in anticipation of a trip to the beach after the tournament, but Clunn walloped a tournament-best 31-07 on day 3 to catapult himself into the lead entering the final day.

As Clunn waited to bag his fish on day 3 – he wanted to delay his trip to stage to allow his family time to arrive from the airport – other Elite Series pros buzzed around the dock, snapping photos and craning their necks to see what one of the sport’s icons had caught.

This video (taken by Alton Jones) will never get old:

Eventually, Clunn bagged his fish and, with the help of Skeet Reese, made his way to stage where his son River joined him to show off his catch.

Clunn came close to winning the Falcon Lake Elite Series in 2013, but there was no denying him this time as he caught 19-00 to beat Hackney by 4 pounds.

“It means a lot,” Clunn said afterward. “I’ve said I’ve never felt that age would get in the way of my performance. I hope it’s not the last one. It’s hard to win. In the old days, you had 10 to 20 guys you had to beat. Now, you can’t let the field come back to you. You have to chase them down. It’s very difficult to win.”

As it turned out, Clunn employed a combination of a vibrating jig and a worm to record his first win since November 2002.

Clausen Loses DQ Appeal

Luke Clausen came into the 2016 season excited for his return to B.A.S.S. competition. After posting a 24th-place finish at the St. Johns River in the opener, he had two rough events at Winyah Bay (82nd) and Bull Shoals/Norfork (92nd) which had him 73rd in the AOY points.

His season took a disastrous turn at Wheeler Lake, where he was disqualified following day 3 after failing a truth verification exam (polygraph) for which he was randomly selected to take. B.A.S.S. informed Clausen his response to the question about abiding by the 28-day no-information rule showed deception, therefore he was DQ’d from the event.

Clausen immediately filed an appeal and was allowed to compete on the final day (he had climbed up to 7th place on day 3).

At issue was whether a conversation Clausen had with a friend over dinner after day 1 of competition qualified as receiving information. The conversation, according to Clausen, included talk about content published in Bassmaster.com’s blog coverage of the tournament.

Clausen said his friend, a resident of northern Alabama, was trying to interpret where other competitors may have been fishing based on the photos posted on the blog. Clausen insists he didn’t ask his friend to decipher locations and that he didn’t solicit the information – his friend simply mentioned it in the course of conversation.

“I never asked for anything,” Clausen said at the time.

The appeal hearing was held the following week and it took a three-person panel about an hour to uphold the DQ rather than rule in Clausen’s favor. As part of his defense, Clausen presented results of a secondary polygraph examination which he took and passed in Washington state where he resides.

It marked the second straight season that an Elite Series angler appealed a disqualification. In 2015, Mike Kernan was successful of his appeal of the DQ he suffered at the Sabine River.

The Clausen matter created a stir across the tournament industry as it highlighted the gray area that exists in the rules over what’s considered soliciting information and what’s not. Clausen wasn’t able to recover from the DQ, which dropped him to a last-place finish at Wheeler and damaged his hopes of qualifying for the Classic.

Stunner at Cayuga

The stars were starting to line up in Greg Hackney’s favor. Through the first six Elite Series tournaments of 2016, the 2014 Elite Series AOY had registered a win, a runner-up finish, a 6th-place finish and a 13th. Two other top-50 outcomes had the Louisiana resident riding high atop the AOY standings again with a 30-point cushion heading to Cayuga Lake in Central New York, where he’d waxed the field two years ago.

The remainder of the schedule (shallow, grass fisheries) was setting up to favor Hackney as well, but he had to navigate Cayuga first before he could set his sights on another AOY title.

On day 1, he’d caught 17-06 to start the tournament in 36th place. It didn’t last long, though, as a fellow competitor reported to B.A.S.S. officials that he witnessed Hackney fishing in a marina on the lake’s southeastern corner. The marina was among the list of areas deemed off limits prior to the event.

Hackney's day-1 weight was disqualified and, in turn, the AOY race was suddenly wide open. Hackney declined to comment at the time about the infraction, but penned a column about the matter three weeks later. Had Hackney realized his error at the time and self-reported himself to B.A.S.S. officials, he would’ve been penalized, but he could’ve salvaged something of the day.

Instead, he wound up 107th (dead last) and his AOY chances all but evaporated as he went fell to 5th, 67 points behind Swindle. It didn’t seem to faze him, though, as he closed the season with a 13th at the Potomac River and a 29th at the Mississippi River before finishing 37th at the Mille Lacs Lake AOY event, settling for 5th in points.

For the record (and argument’s sake), had Hackney recorded an average finish at Cayuga (his average finish at the other eight events was 19th), he’d have eclipsed Swindle in the AOY race by 10 points.

The Drought is Over!

Kevin VanDam’s 2016 season started in early March with a 48th-place finish at the Bassmaster Classic as he returned to the sport’s Super Bowl after not qualifying for the 2015 edition. It wasn’t the beginning he was hoping for as his winless drought extended into its fifth season.

Things sure improved by the time the season wrapped up in mid-September, though.

Coming off back-to-back missed checks at Bull Shoals/Norfork and Wheeler, he cracked 96-02 at Toledo Bend in May to capture his 21st career victory and snap a 49-tournament (Elite Series and Classics) winless streak that dated back to the 2011 Classic. His 29-05 bag on day 1 was the biggest of the event and served notice to the field that ol’ KVD still had his mojo.

"You heard a lot of 'What's wrong with KVD?' and now, after (Sunday), it's 'KVD's back,''' VanDam said afterward. "Well, in my mind, I never went anywhere.”

While some competitors tried to take advantage of the high water that brought plenty of shoreline vegetation into play, VanDam’s key was locating some fish offshore that no one else had pinpointed and then showing them a variety of Strike King crankbaits throughout the event.

Five weeks later, VanDam was at it again at Cayuga Lake, but he needed a little final-day surge to get it done. He left the dock in 3rd place on day 4 with a 1-12 deficit to leader Jordan Lee, who was searching for his first win. A 15-07 stringer was enough to edge Lee by just over a pound, giving VanDam his record eighth full-field Elite Series victory (nobody else has more than five) and snuffing out all of the talk about him being past his prime.

By finishing in the Top 8 at Cayuga, VanDam punched his ticket to the first Classic Bracket tournament, set for the week following ICAST with the upper Niagara River in Buffalo, N.Y., serving as the venue for a made-for-the-Internet match fishing event that awarded the winner an automatic berth into the 2017 Classic.

After disposing of Drew Benton in the first round, VanDam knocked out Koby Kreiger in the semifinals before edging Brett Hite in the final, but not without a little controversy as Hite filed a protest following the championship round to seek clarification about a fish that VanDam wasn’t able to count toward his total since it had been caught outside the tournament boundary.

The matter was quickly resolved – Hite insisted he wasn’t attempting to “steal a win” from VanDam – and VanDam claimed his third B.A.S.S. win of 2016 and earned a trip to Lake Conroe for the ’17 Classic.

> End Part 1 (of 2)