Season at a Glance: 1979 Bassmaster Trail – Part One

By 1979 the Bassmaster Tournament Trail was in its 12th year of existence, and the momentum looked like it would never stop.  While the 1979 Bassmaster Tournament Trail was expanding for the professional angler, B.A.S.S. was also giving its membership, the heart of B.A.S.S., something too.  Today, in part one of this series, we’ll delve into the 1979 season, what B.A.S.S. was doing for its members, and finish with the reports for the first two events.

1979 Schedule, Rules, and Payout

The 1979 Bassmaster Tournament Trail would start out, just as it had the previous seven years, in Florida.  What was different this year was the start date would be a month later than normal, February.  The Bassmaster schedule would take anglers to four familiar lakes and two unknowns.

Bassmaster Tournament Director Harold Sharp had this to say about the schedule.

“The 1979 B.A.S.S. schedule is one of the best in recent years.  It has been programmed to challenge the angler with a wide variety of different types of lakes and potential fishing patterns.”

The 1979 schedule would be the first time B.A.S.S. would travel to the far west in a regular season event.  The venue would be sprawling Lake Powell, 200 miles long with 2000 miles of shoreline.  The event would be held out of Page Arizona’s Wahweap Marina.

The second new venue would be Arkansas’ Millwood Lake located in Ashdown.  The 30,000-acre lake was known for its standing timber and big bass.

Another first in the 1979 season was B.A.S.S. was venturing outside the United States for an event.  This time the Bassmaster Chapter Championship would be held in Ontario, Canada at Lake of the Woods.  The six-man team championship would be a $50,000 event with the top scoring individual on the winning team heading to the Bass Masters Classic as in the past.

Another first was the Classic would be held in September, instead of October.  This opened up the possibility of having the Classic in a northern tier state, according to Ray Scott.  Scott also said the Classic venue would be announced a few weeks prior to the event.

The Classic this year would feature 24 contestants from the six qualifying events plus the Federation angler.

Missing from the 1979 schedule was the BASS Champs event.  This event wouldn’t be held due to it taking away from the Classic but overall, it had raised $30,000 for the Bass Research Foundation in the two years it was held.

It was also revealed that the 1980 season would start late in 1979, November 14-16 with the Alabama Invitational at Lake Eufaula.

Here’s the schedule as it was shown in the February 1979 issue of Bassmaster Magazine.

• February 21-23, 1979: Florida Invitational, St. Johns River, Welaka, FL
• March 21-23, 1979: Arizona Invitational, Lake Powell, Page, AZ
• April 25-27, 1979: Virginia Invitational, Lake Gaston, Gasburg, VA
• May 23-25, 1979: Kentucky Invitational, Kentucky Lake, Hardin, KY
• June 20-22, 1979: New York Invitational, St. Lawrence River, Alexandria Bay, NY
• July 18-20, 1979: Arkansas Invitational, Millwood Reservoir, Ashdown, AR
• August 22-24, 1979: Bassmaster Chapter Championship, Lake of the Woods, Sioux Narrows, Ontario, Canada
• September 26-28, 1979: Bass Masters Classic, Site to be announced.

The payout for the 1979 season would be larger than any year prior, featuring a $475,000 total purse with a full field in each event.  The full field wasn’t a problem, though, as nearly every event in the 1978 season met the 250-angler limit.

With a full 250-man field, each event would pay out $62,500 with the winner receiving $14,000 which included $9,000 cash and a Ranger boat.  B.A.S.S. also said they’d pay down to 40^th place with the final check being $400.  Entry fee for each Invitational was $300.

The $50,000 BMC would pay $25,000 to the champion, $10,000 to the runner-up, and $1,000 to 10^th place.

The 14-inch rule, that had been installed in 1978 was still in force and this year they went to a seven-bass daily bag limit.  Harold Sharp said the 14-rule makes the anglers look for better fish rather than chasing smaller fish.

Qualifying for the BMC would be based on total weight for all the regular season events.  Plus, any tournament winner who fished all six events would automatically qualify for the Classic.

Professional anglers weren’t the only ones getting more, the membership was too.  First, B.A.S.S. was giving every B.A.S.S. member a $5,000 accidental death insurance coverage while fishing or boating.  Another bonus was the Boat Theft Reward was increased from $500 to $1,000.  This was an unusual reward if you read the fine print.  You as the owner, any family member or the police were not eligible for the reward.

Rules, Schedule, Payout, and Member Benefits are provided at the end of this article in the gallery.

Big Fish of the event went to Hank Parker, who on the first day caught a 10-07.  The second biggest fish of the event was also caught the first day by Larry Oakes, a 10-02 hawg, but Oakes would get any of the awards as big fish awards were given to the overall daily big fish winners.  Other big fish caught were a 9-12 caught by Jerry Wagner and Ray Tester, 8-05.

The full scorecard is presented in the table below.

But to western anglers who’d been fishing against Klein the last few years, they knew Klein and what he was capable of.  One of those anglers was Dee Thomas, Klein’s mentor.

Thomas knew his buddy had a chance to win the event.  The problem was Klein’s boat was slower than most and required gas at Dangling Rope.  Thomas had a buddy who was willing to loan him his Ranger 185 with a 150-horse motor that was also equipped with a bladder tank.  The boat was much faster than Klein’s and didn’t require Klein to stop at the floating fuel dock.

On day three, Klein made his way up to the San Juan Arm 25 minutes ahead of schedule.  He and his partner for the day, Shorty Evans, hit a 350-yard stretch of shore flipping Garland Spider Jigs and Mister Twister Lizards.  By 10:30 am, Klein had a 7-fish limit in the boat.  He then commenced to upgrading and switched to a short-arm spinnerbait.

The rest of the field was much farther down lake and were struggling.  Roland Martin and Randy Fite didn’t know it at the time but had been sharing fish in Rock Creek.  Martin then decided to head to Last Chance Canyon as a last resort, but in the end, it didn’t pan out.

Martin ended up weighing 12-08 for the day, dropping him to the 5th spot with 52-08 and Fite brought in 9-02, which gave him a total of 49-06 and 8th-place overall.

But there was one angler who really took the idea of fishing close to the extreme.  That angler was Bill Dance and over the course of three days, he only burned 13 gallons of fuel compared to Klein’s 148 gallons.  Dance had the entire Wahweap Bay to his own for the entire event and his smart move had him sitting in first place towards the end of the final day weigh-in.  Over the course of three days, Dance had tallied 57-00 (with live-fish bonus points) and it appeared as if he’d win the event with only a few anglers left to weigh in.

That was until Klein showed up, “fashionably late,” with a sack of seven bass.  Klein needed 19-01 to pass Dance and when the needle settled on the scale, Kleins fish topped out at 19-02 (without live-fish bonus points).  Gary Klein, the 21-year-old rookie from Oroville, CA had won his first B.A.S.S. title in only his second try.

Longtime western tournament pro Pat Donoho, Las Vegas, NV, weighed in 56-05 (21 fish) for the third spot, while western veteran Fred Kunkle, Havasu Lake, CA, weighed in 55-00 (20 fish) for fourth place.  Rounding out the top 5 was Roland Martin.

Big fish for the event was a tie between Hank Parker and Bo Dowden with 7-00 bass.  Stan Ervin got the big bass for the final day, a 6 -00.

The actual tournament report for this event is presented below in the gallery.  It’s an amazing story that I felt you would want to read.

You can also see the full tournament scorecard below.

Gallery