Another Example of B.A.S.S. Class
Posted by Pete Robbins on Jan 12th 2022
I received the January/February 2022 issue of Bassmaster this week and was pleasantly surprised to find a tribute to the late Aaron Martens on the cover, along with a great companion piece by Joe Sills about the lizard wrangler inside. Martens enjoyed great success at B.A.S.S, but as most of you likely know he departed for the Bass Pro Tour in 2019. While most industry folks handled “the split” tactfully, it would be remarkably pollyannaish to claim that there was no bad blood whatsoever. That’s why I was so happy to see this – the easy-but-childish thing for B.A.S.S. to do would be to erase A-Mart’s legacy like a picture of the McFly family, but they continually took the high road.
That extends back to the 2019 Classic in Knoxville, A-Mart’s last B.A.S.S. event and likely the last for many of his peers like Skeet, KVD and Ott DeFoe. As a member of the B.A.S.S. team at that event, I was never told to avoid interviewing those guys. Quite the contrary, I was encouraged to chase whatever story I deemed most salient. I wanted to discuss what the Classic meant to Martens, a four-time runner-up. In service of that goal, I talked not only to Aaron, but also to other departing BPTers.
I don’t know if anyone at B.A.S.S. currently harbors any ill will towards those who left. If they do, I haven’t heard about it. Clearly, though, this cover story was the right thing to do, as were the numerous tributes that B.A.S.S. published after Aaron’s all-too-young death. We shouldn’t have to congratulate people for doing the right thing, but I hope this is an example of the way things will operate on all sides going forward.