Good in a Boat, Good in a Yak

On Monday, I received my March 2023 issue of BASS Times, which featured an article about Elite Series pro Greg DiPalma entitled “DiPalma ready to take on Kayak Series.” It was well-written, but perhaps a day late and a dollar short, since over the weekend DiPalma had won the Bassmaster Kayak Series event on Lake Guntersville – his first such tournament, and the first four days he fished out of his ’yak.

He's not the first Elite Series pro to jump into that series and claim a victory. Mike Iaconelli won another tournament in the series closer to both of their homes – a 2021 event on the Upper Chesapeake Bay.

My first thought was to wonder when the griping would begin. We’ve heard it before in parallel contexts – for example, “What right does a tour-level pro have to fish in a BFL?” has been asked more than once over the years. In fact, it predates the BFLs, when they were still called the Red Mans, and Rick Clunn had to defend his $100,000 prize in the All-American, an event allegedly made for the “weekend angler.”

I’m agnostic about whether pros should be able to jackpot local events. Your club derby? Maybe not. A one-dayer for kids? Definitely not. But is something open to the general public, with an entry fee? Unless there’s some explicit prohibition, I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Again, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. What stood out to me was not the fairness or unfairness of DiPalma competing, but rather the concept that dudes who catch ‘em will catch ‘em any which way.

Every change the sport has had – from adding co-anglers, to eliminating co-anglers, to making every fish count, to going back to a five fish limit – has had advocates and detractors. Usually, they base their opinions almost entirely on how they think it will benefit them. Without fail, however, the standings don’t flip-flop. They don’t change in a major way. Anglers who were good before are good after. To DiPalma’s credit, he didn’t have the experience fishing out of a kayak, maneuvering a kayak, or game-planning for limited mobility of many of his competitors – and yet he still caught ‘em. That’s what makes this sport great – at the end of the day, there may be drama, there may be excuses. Either you catch fish or you don’t. They’re big or they’re small or they’re somewhere in-between – but the scale doesn’t lie.