Tempus Fugit, Clunn Edition
Posted by Pete Robbins on Jan 25th 2021
photo courtesy of B.A.S.S.
Two of the most serendipitous events of my writing career involve Rick Clunn, and the time that I rode in his boat during a Bassmaster Classic is not one of them. The first came in the summer of 1990, when I was home from college on a summer break and I read that the Bassmaster Classic was being held on the James River, just two hours from my home. I’d been a Bassmaster subscriber for several years, but I’d never been to (let alone fished) a tournament, so I made the drive down to Richmond on my day off, reveled in the consumerism of the Expo, and then dawdled on the way to the weigh-in. By the time I got there, every seat in the house was full, so I stood on a concourse above the lower ring of seats. Fifteen feet to my right were two attractive young women, one about my age, the other perhaps a couple of years younger. I kept one eye on them and one eye on the anglers onstage.
When Clunn pulled out what was for the James a massive limit, the crowd went ballistic. It was deafening WWE or NBA-level cheering. I’d known who he was before that date, but I had no idea that people were so enamored of the sport – or that I would be shortly thereafter.
As Clunn was crowned the Classic champ, he and his wife were placed back in the boat for a victory lap around the coliseum, and they were quickly joined by two young women – the ones who’d been standing next to me just a few moments earlier.
Fast forward nearly 26 years, and I’m headed to south Georgia for a fishing media event. I’ve now fished lots of tournaments. I’ve owned boats much nicer than the one that Clunn drove that day. I’ve fished the James River where he won countless times. I’m now part of the group that would go ballistic if 1990 got replayed again. As I’ve detailed previously in this space, on the day that Clunn was to claim his crown at Palatka in 2016, I could have been flying into a number of different airports, but I’d semi-randomly settled on Jacksonville, the one closest to the weigh-in site. This was both coincidental and not, but it proved to be fortuitous because I got to watch him hoist the trophy. I got to watch Skeet Reese carry Rick’s bag of fish to the scales. And I got to watch many of his peers hang around to see him win. Just as in 1990, it was one of those moments that almost didn’t happen, but because it did it thrust a jolt of adrenaline into my love for the sport.
Unfortunately, I had no reason to be there three years later when he did it again.
Now, in just two weeks the Elites will be back at the St. Johns, and as I wrote in my Fantasy Fishing column, if you’re not cheering for him to win, “you may be a great fantasy fishing player but you have no soul.”
The lesson I’ve taken away from all of this is that so much in life and in fishing depends on being there when things happen. As a guy with a full-time job and a second one that commands almost as much time, I can’t be there for everything, but that’s not an excuse to abstain from the arena.
