Clunn honored with Ray Murski Lifetime Achievement Award
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With more than 300 attendees looking on and hundreds watching online, the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame honored 2001 inductee Rick Clunn by naming him the latest recipient of the Ray Murski Lifetime Achievement Award during the induction ceremony Thursday night at the White River Conference Center.
Bass Pro Shops founder (and 2002 Hall inductee) Johnny Morris and Steve Bowman, a 2020 Hall of Fame inductee and member of the Hall’s board of directors, introduced the award together on stage, initially keeping the audience in the dark about who the recipient would be.
“We created (this award) because Ray Murski signified the heart and soul of bass fishing for a long time and if you’re given this award, you signify the heart and soul of bass fishing,” Bowman said.
Then Morris relayed the story of Clunn's plight prior to the 1976 Bassmaster Classic.
Before that event, the competitors were due to meet in New Orleans where Ray Scott would reveal the location of the tournament. Clunn was a fishing guide at Lake Conroe at the time, but money was tight. He did not have enough funds to cover his trip to the meet up site, prompting him to take his prized hunting rifle (a Browning 270 BAR) to a pawn shop. He collected $400 for the rifle and made it to New Orleans, then boarded a chartered flight bound for Alabama with the other anglers.
Scott revealed Lake Guntersville would be the venue and Clunn went on to tally 59 pounds, 15 ounces over three days to claim the first of his four Classic titles and set the course for his career.
With $25,000 in prize money in hand, Clunn returned to the pawn shop in hopes of retrieving his firearm, but it had already been sold.
“Rick, what you mean to the sport of fishing it’s unbelievable,” Morris said before inviting Clunn on stage. “Not just your skill, but your passion and influence. That you choose to live your life here in the Ozarks makes us very proud to be your neighbor. I am grateful to you.”
Clunn then joined Morris and Bowman on stage and accepted a commemorative rifle – a Browning, of course – to mark the occasion.
Clunn, whose Bassmaster tournament career spanned six decades and more than 500 events, is just the third recipient of the award, joining Scott (2013) and Morris (2017). He stepped away from Elite Series competition following the 2024 season after collecting tournament wins in five different decades during his career.
“The achievement award is something I truly do not deserve,” a humbled Clunn said during his unprepared remarks. “What I did was for selfish reasons. The most successful people, I think somewhat, have to do that. They have to put everything in their being and passion and commitment into it. Everybody around them has to sacrifice. That’s the way I think most successful people are, not necessarily anglers. Very few times do we have the time to reflect on all those people and what they did for us. Ray was one of those people. There are so many people that you will never know that have given so much to this sport in an unselfish way.
“There’s something to commitment and passion that I can’t totally explain. I’m often asked by parents, ‘Can my son make it?’ … I can’t tell you if they’ll make it unless I ask them one question: Have they hit rock bottom yet? Because passion when everything is coming your way is easy to hold onto. But if they do not have that passion when they hit rock bottom, they probably won’t make it. If that passion is still there, they’ll figure out a way to make it work.”
