Bass Masters Classic Patches

Soon after I arrived at Stan’s house, he took me upstairs to his office. I’d been in his office on prior trips but this time he opened it up to me. We looked through some of the boxes of black and white pictures he and his wife Anita had taken over the 68 years they provided photo support to the sport.

Stan and I spent roughly six hours going through these photos, many of which he gave me to share with the readers of this site. A majority of these pictures have never been published while many others had been published in the top magazines and books in the early days of the sport. I will be sharing these photos with you soon.

After spending time in his office going through the photos and other memorabilia, he took me downstairs to his garage. Like any other serious angler, his garage was filled with fishing gear. Tackle boxes, rods, reels, and containers with even more boxes of gear he’d collected over his fishing life.

He allowed me to take pictures of a lot of old tackle to use on the site. Tackle like Bagley’s plastic worms still on their cards, DeLong worms still in their tubes, Creme worms, Al Foss Shimmy Wigglers still in their steel boxes. The amount of gear he’d amassed over his career was truly amazing.

As we were going through his tackle, Stan asked if I had any need for patches. I sheepishly said, yes. He told me to pull down the big Rubbermaid container off its shelf and that I could have its contents.

If you’ve followed the site at all, you know I have a passion for anything that has to do with bass fishing memorabilia – and patches are a huge part of that. In this container was 50-plus years’ worth of patches. I emptied the container into a cardboard box and we went about looking at tackle again.

The drive back to my sister-in-law’s house was long. All I wanted to do was check out the contents of the cardboard box.

The patches made for Bass Masters Classic I and II were the same design. The shape of the patch was a shield and embroidered on it was a cup surrounded by two jumping bass. This was placed over a globe with Bass Masters Classic written at the bottom.  The 1971 Classic patch was on a black background while the 1972 Classic patch was on a yellow background, if I’m not mistaken. I have only seen one 1972 Classic patch and that was at the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame Museum located at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife Museum in Springfield, MO.

But there’s a twist to the 1971 Classic patch.

Back in May 2015, when I originally posted this piece, Harold Sharp emailed telling me he didn’t recall a patch being made for the Classic and to ask Stan where he’d gotten the patch. I called Stan and he didn’t remember, thinking he’d gotten just like all the other patches he’d received.

When I told Harold what Stan had said, this is what he wrote back:

The 1973 and ‘74 Classic patches were again based on the shape of a shield. Embroidered across the top was Miller High Life Bass Masters Classic. Below that were vertical stripes with a cup and a leaping bass above the cup.

The 1975 Classic patch deviated from the shield shape and was triangular, almost like a re-entry capsule from the Apollo space flights. It was made on a dark blue background, leaping bass at the top, globe in the middle and a red ribbon that wrapped around the globe with Bass Masters Classic written inside the ribbon.

In 1976 the shape of the patch changed again, this time to a circle. In the center of the circle was the globe with the B.A.S.S. shield and the year. Framing the globe were the words, Bass Masters Classic World Championship. This form of the patch lasted through 1977 with 1978 through 1983 patches losing the words World Championship. I cannot speak for the 1984 patch as I am missing that one.

The 1985 patch went back to the triangle shape of the 1975 patch and does not have press angler embroidered on it.

After 1985, it appears the patches became standardized to resemble the standard B.A.S.S. member patch. At the top was Bass Masters Classic, and at the bottom was World Championship and the year. In the middle was the B.A.S.S. shield.

But there’s a curious deviation from that thought. It’s from the 1988 Classic. While at Greene’s Boat and Motor in 2014 I was shown several of Hubert Greene’s patches from the day.