Inductee

Jay Yelas —Jay Yelas launched his professional tournament fishing career in 1989 and registered top-12 finishes in two of his first three events. During the first decade of the new millennium, he authored one of the greatest stretches of sustained excellence in the sport’s history, winning a Bassmaster Classic and three tour-level Angler of the Year (AOY) titles over the course of six seasons (2002-2007).

The native of Santa Barbara, Calif. knew he wanted to be a pro angler by the time he was old enough to obtain a driver’s license. After earning a degree in Resource Recreation Management from Oregon State University, he lived a vagabond existence for several years to achieve that goal. Over the next three decades, which included moves to Phoenix, Texas, and eventually, back to Oregon, he competed in more than 350 pro events and pocketed $2.5 million in tournament winnings with B.A.S.S. and FLW.

“I’ve always loved to bass-fish and it’s just a God-given talent,” he said during his early-2000s run of dominance. “I’m happiest when I’m using my gifts and creative talents.”

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Yelas has never been known as a guru of a single technique – versatility has long been his trademark. Even through the height of his success, his game evolved as new methods emerged from the West Coast. A lot of his initial success was achieved with spinnerbaits and jigs, but he was primarily employing swimbaits and dropshot rigs by the time of his third AOY crown.

His seminal year was 2002 when he won both the Classic at Alabama’s Lay Lake and the FLW Tour points championship. Fishing far up the Coosa River near the Logan Martin dam, he led the Classic from start to finish and took big-bass honors for each round, eventually outdistancing runner-up Aaron Martens by more than 6 pounds with a 45-13 total. The majority of his key fish in that event came from a 100-yard stretch of bank about 500 yards below the dam that was totally fruitless until the middle of each day, when a torrent of water was released from the dam for power-generation purposes.

Despite his pleasant, easy-going nature, he’s never hesitated to take a firm stand on issues that have arisen within the sport. He took a 13-year hiatus from B.A.S.S. competition after the ’06 Classic when he felt that the organization, then owned by ESPN, had shifted its media emphasis away from competition and toward angler antics that made for good TV. He used a “legends exemption” achieved via his Classic victory and AOY title to return to B.A.S.S.’ top circuit in 2019 after the organization had gone through two ownership changes since his departure.

He expresses his deep Christian faith at every opportunity and has long donated time and resources to charitable endeavors. He serves as the executive director for the C.A.S.T. for Kids Foundation, which aids special-needs children through numerous fishing events held annually throughout the nation.

Ron Lindner (1934 – 2020) –  Ron Lindner — In 1970, about the time Ray Scott’s B.A.S.S. tournaments were starting to gain momentum, two brothers, both fishing guides in the Brainerd, Minnesota, area, decided to “test the waters” of outdoor television by filming a show teaching anglers how to catch fish on Big Sand Lake near Park Rapids, Minnesota.

With Al Lindner explaining and demonstrating the techniques on camera, the show was a success, and it led to hundreds more programs that have taught millions of people how to become better fishermen. As the on-air “talent,” Al was in the limelight, and he became one of the superstars of sportfishing in the Midwest and throughout the nation.

But Ron Lindner, Al’s older brother, deserved just as much credit for scripting, filming and directing that show and the numerous episodes that followed.

Together, the Lindner brothers went on to build a multimedia empire under the In-Fisherman brand, and they continue to influence sportfishing through their family-owned Lindner Media Productions.

In an effort to help anglers understand how to increase their fishing success, Ron Lindner came up with the formula, F+L+P=S (Fish + Location + Presentation = Success. That “algebra of angling” guided all of the Lindners’ educational platforms, beginning with the first In-Fisherman Magazine in 1974. In addition to the iconic magazine, the Lindners produced innumerable videos and DVDs, product sales videos and others.

At its zenith, In-Fisherman magazine had more than 300,000 subscribers, “In-Fisherman TV” was shown in 600,000 households, and the In-Fisherman Radio program was aired six times a week over 800 affiliate stations in 48 states.

Ron also co-wrote 10 books, and he wrote hundreds of published magazine articles and thousands of radio and TV scripts. He also devised a “fish response calendar” and a comprehensive system of classifying lakes, rivers and reservoirs designed to give anglers a shortcut to finding prevailing fishing patterns.

A professional guide, Ron also designed numerous articles of tackle and equipment, and he is an inventor with three patents and 30 unique designs to his credit. More than 70 million of his Lindy Rigs, which anchored the brothers’ successful Lindy Tackle Co., have been sold over the years.

After selling In-Fisherman in 1998, the Lindners turned their focus to Lindner Media Productions, which they founded along with sons James, Daniel and Bill. They continue to produce fishing educational videos under the names “Angling Edge” and “Fishing Edge,” and they produce commercial videos for many companies in the sportfishing industry.

In 2000, Lindner was selected as a member of the inaugural class of inductees into the Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame. He and Al received the Hedley Donovan Award at the Minnesota Magazine and Publications Association annual awards program for their contributions to the magazine industry in 2002, and in 2007, the brothers were inducted into the Normark Hall of Fame. Ron Lindner was named a “Legendary Angler” by the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wisconsin, in 1988, and he was inducted into that organization’s Hall of Fame in 2008.

After becoming a deeply committed Christian in 1978, Ron Lindner became passionate about sharing his faith, which he did through motivational speeches, magazine articles and radio interviews. He and Al founded or lent valuable support to several Christian charities. Their latest book, First Light on the Water, highlights the life lessons the Lindners learned on and off the water and explains how faith guides their lives.

Bryan Kerchal – (1971-1994) In July of 1994, 23 year-old angler Bryan Kerchal lived the dream of hundreds of thousands of weekend anglers by beating a star-packed field of anglers to claim the title at the 24^th Bassmaster Classic. In doing so, he also became the first, and to date only, fisherman to win as a B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier, as well as the first northeastern angler to claim the coveted crown and the $50,000 top prize.

Kerchal may have attained fishing immortality while still exceptionally young, but the path to his Hall of Fame achievements was anything but easy. He was raised in Newtown, Connecticut, and after graduating from Newton High with the Class if 1989, he briefly attended Massachusetts’ Salem State University, where he spent more time poring over Bassmaster Magazine than his textbooks. He left school and took a part-time job as a cook at the Ground Round restaurant, which left time try to figure out his life’s work, while also pursuing his passion for bass fishing.

He’d been introduced to the sport through a neighbor and was self-taught until he joined the Housatonic Valley Bassmasters club. Through that B.A.S.S.-affiliated club, he qualified for the state championship tournament and made the 12-man Connecticut team, then qualified for the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship. His performance as the top Eastern Division angler there earned him a berth in the 1993 Bassmaster Classic on Alabama’s Logan Martin Lake. At the 1993 Classic he finished dead last, but there was stout company and no shame at the bottom of the leaderboard, as four-time Classic champ Rick Clunn beat him by less than a pound.

Defying incredible odds and the same daunting qualification path, Kerchal returned to the Bassmaster Classic as a B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier in 1994, making him the first to defend a B.A.S.S. Nation title and qualify for the Classic, as an amateur, twice. He’d fished six B.A.S.S. Invitationals that season, but the B.A.S.S. Nation was once again his route to the world championship. This time around, the results were quite different.

Kerchal suffered through a tough practice period at North Carolina’s High Rock Lake, and while many pundits predicted that the summertime conditions would allow Hall of Famer David Fritts to repeat his 1993 win using offshore tactics, heavy rain prior to the event raised and muddied the water. That made flipping to the lake’s many boat docks a more viable tactic. He’d found a red shad Culprit ribbontail worm floating in the lake during practice, and having little to lose he decided that would be as good a lure as any. Pitching that Texas-rigged worm with a 3/16 ounce bullet weight and a 2/0 Gamakatsu hook to three sets of docks in Second Creek, Kerchal weighed in three consecutive limits – the only angler to do so — that totaled 36 pounds 7 ounces. He ended Day One in fourth place and took the lead on Day Two. Veteran flipper Tommy Biffle caught 18-14 on the final day of competition to make a run for the title, but ultimately fell 3 ounces short of Kerchal’s catch.

Each time he caught a legal fish, Kerchal took out a small green whistle shaped like a bass and expressed his satisfaction through music. The fish whistle became a symbol of his excellence and his enthusiasm and has been picked up on by future B.A.S.S. Nation qualifiers, including 2017 B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year Brandon Palaniuk, who carried one while he fished as a B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier at the 2011 Classic.

“Most of the field had 10, 15, 20 years more experience than Bryan did,” Rick Clunn told the Charlotte Observer after Kerchal’s win. “He didn’t have nearly the knowledge that the rest of the field had. But I’ll trade all the knowledge in the world for enthusiasm and belief in you. As you get older in this sport, technology takes over. For a lot of fishermen, it steals the passion out of what they do. But mentally, all young people tend to have this belief in the impossible.”

Tragically, Kerchal did not get a chance to defend his title on High Rock Lake in 1995 or to fulfill his destiny. Less than five months after his history-making victory, he and 14 other died when American Eagle Flight 3379 crashed. He’d been making an appearance for one of the sponsors who’d seized upon his success and enthusiasm and partnered with him. At the 1995 Classic, a bassboat was driven around the arena with his trophy in it.

He was survived by his parents Ray and Ronnie Kerchal; a sister, Deana Kerchal; and longtime girlfriend Suzanne Dignon.

The B.A.S.S. Nation championship trophy was subsequently renamed the Bryan Kerchal Memorial Trophy.

Steve Bowman (1963—) Raised in a single-parent home and with no one to teach him how to fish, Steve Bowman found a way to stoke his outdoor passions. He mowed lawns to buy a Zebco 33, which he somehow attached to a car radio antenna, and went to work figuring out how to catch whatever swam in the Fourche Creek bottoms near his home in southwest Little Rock, Arkansas.

Those earliest days of his fishing career shaped Bowman in important ways. The resourcefulness he developed enabled him to pioneer digital media coverage of bass fishing, and his childhood passion for fishing inspired him to help develop new opportunities for youngsters to follow in his footsteps.

As outdoor editor of the Arkansas Democrat and (later) the Democrat-Gazette, Bowman was one of the most influential outdoor journalists in the nation. His crusade blocked a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to channelize the lower White River, a wilderness treasure of habitat for deer, waterfowl and game fish. He worked with the Corps to improve aquatic habitat along the Arkansas River. And he devised and helped launch a project to use ponds on Arkansas’ prison lands as nurseries for stocking bass in the Arkansas River.

His pet project from his days at the Democrat-Gazette was the creation — in partnership with then-Governor Mike Huckabee — of the Coleman Creek Pond fishery, a highly utilized fishing hole for urban youth.

He set the standards for newspaper coverage of competitive bass fishing, devoting enormous amounts of space and words to reporting on all levels of bass tournaments, from local weekend events to the prestigious Bassmaster Classic.

After leaving the newspaper business in 2001, Bowman was hired to launch ESPNOutdoors.com, which quickly became the most-read and most-visited outdoor sports website in the nation. Tasked to oversee tournament coverage for Bassmaster.com, Bowman dramatically changed the way Bassmaster events were covered. His ideas included color photo galleries, the “Bass Blog” with reports and videos in real time from the water, and the War Room, which served as the precursor to the groundbreaking Bassmaster LIVE programming.

In 2003 he was a key leader on the team that created College Bass Fishing, and intercollegiate fishing circuit that evolved into the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series.

He is the author or co-author of three outdoor books, including The Arkansas Duck Hunter’s Almanac, one of the most successful duck hunting books in the country, and The Series, a coffee table book on the launch of the Bassmaster Elite Series. Among his duties as content director for JM Associates in Little Rock, Bowman edited Redfish Nation Magazine and Boat US Angler magazine while also managing Bassmaster.com, the current most-visited outdoor-centric website in the world.

Over the course of his more than three decades as an outdoor journalist, Bowman also hosted a successful television show, “Water Dog” on the Outdoor Life Network, and “The Arkansas Sportsman” radio show on the Signal Network.

In addition to his work as editor and manager for tournament coverage on Bassmaster.com and manager, Angler Relations for B.A.S.S., Bowman serves on the advisory board of Vanishing Paradise, an advocacy group dedicated to stemming the loss of marshland in the Louisiana Delta. He also serves as an auxiliary sheriff’s deputy for the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas.

He was inducted into the Arkansas Outdoors Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Waterfowl Hall of Fame in 2017. He has served on the board of directors of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame since 2012.

Forrest Wood (1932 – 2020) Growing up in a small north/central Arkansas town taught Mr. Wood traits that have helped him influence millions of people during his career. Hard work, honesty, pride in workmanship and integrity.

In the mid 1960’s, before professional bass fishing began, he made his living in a couple of different ways. First, he was a very successful trout guide on the White River. So successful, he employed several anglers to help him cover the demands that he received for his services. His wife and four daughters helped by preparing lunches for his clients. Lunches that included fried chicken that became almost as famous as did the guide himself.

In addition to guiding, he also worked as a building contractor in the wintertime, when it was too cold to fish. A successful business that almost didn’t allow him time to fish when the weather warmed. As luck would have it, there were more people who wanted to fish, than to have homes built.

In 1967, when Ray Scott held his first B.A.S.S. tournament, Mr. Wood did not compete. Why? Because he didn’t know about it. However, he fished the second event, on Lewis Smith Lake in Alabama, and began an historic career.

In order to keep the good guides who worked for him in the summer, busy in the winter, he started a small boat repair business on the side. A small business that turned into one of the most well-known bass boat companies in the world.

Ranger Boats, as he would call his company, may have come from humble beginnings, but, his wife, and partner, of over fifty-years, Nina, enabled him to see what bass fishing could, and would, become one day. This vision helped Ranger grow into the largest employer in north/central Arkansas.

Mr. Wood, the Bass Anglers Sportsmen Society, with Ray Scott, laid the groundwork for professional bass fishing. One man working with the other. One company leading the drive to unite anglers around the world, while Ranger supported and sponsored B.A.S.S. in their quest.

No other, in professional bass fishing history, has been as responsible for supporting and sponsoring fishermen, and tournament trails, than has Ranger Boat Company, led by Forrest Wood.

Mr. Wood is also quite an accomplished professional angler. He competed on the B.A.S.S. circuit for many years, even qualifying for two Bassmaster Classics and he won the New York Invitational B.A.S.S. tournament on the St. Lawrence River, in june of 1979.

While most people know him as the founder of Ranger Boats, not many people realize the tremendous contributions he has made both publicly and privately.

Throughout the years, this outstanding humanitarian and philanthropist has donated millions of dollars to such organizations as: American Cancer Society; St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital; Epilepsy Society of America and literally hundreds of smaller, regional organizations throughout his thirty-four years in the business.

Roland Martin — When Roland Martin entered his professional B.A.S.S. tournament in 1970, his reputation had preceded him. Some expected he’d win that first event. He didn’t. He finished second. But he did win the second B.A.S.S. tournament he entered — the 1970 Lake Seminole event — and followed that with another second-place finish in the next event.

From that auspicious beginning, Martin dominated tournament competition. In 15 seasons, between 1971 and 1985, he won nine Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles — an amazing feat that has never been, and likely won’t be, equaled.

In 2005, Martin retired from Elite-level B.A.S.S. competition after 35 seasons on the trail. By that time, he had racked up 19 victories (including three in a row in 1980-81) and another 19 second-place finishes. He qualified for 25 Bassmaster Classics and, although he wasn’t able to win the championship, he finished in the Top 10 in nine Classics. In 306 B.A.S.S. tournaments, Martin finished in the money in 193, including 102 Top 10 finishes, and earned more than $1 million. Martin also competed on the FLW circuit, winning another $139,000 there and qualifying for two FLW Cup championships.

In a ESPN’s months-long campaign in 2005 to select the World’s Greatest Angler, based on fan voting, Martin was named the runner-up, just behind Rick Clunn. Apparently, Clunn’s four Classic championships trumped Martin’s nine Angler of the Year titles, at least in the minds of fishing fans.

Off the water, Martin had a profound effect on the growth of the sport. He and John Powell were the two full-time pros participating in the nationwide B.A.S.S. Seminar Tour, which jump-started membership in Ray Scott’s organization and drove national support for tournament angling.

He was hired by Darrell Lowrance in 1970 to help with research and development of early Lowrance depthfinders.

On May 4, 1971, Martin was having dinner with Forrest Wood and his family when Wood received a phone call telling him his Ranger Boats plant was on fire. Martin and Wood reached the blazing building in time to drag a file cabinet through a window just before the roof collapsed. The file cabinet contained unfilled orders for Ranger Boats and enabled Wood to stay in business.

For decades, his “Fishing With Roland Martin” TV show has entertained and educated millions of bass anglers across the country. His popular how-to book, Roland Martin’s 101 Bass-Catching Secrets, has been a staple in anglers’ libraries since its publication in 1980.

Martin is given credit for coining and defining the concept of pattern fishing in 1969, when he was creating a bass fishing map of the Santee Cooper lakes, where he guided fishermen. He explained the term in his book: “A pattern is the exact set of water conditions, such as depth, cover, structure, temperature, clarity, currents, etc., which attracts fish to that specific spot and to other similar spots all over the same body of water.”

Martin was the first professional bass fisherman to be inducted into all three fishing halls of fame: the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) Hall of Fame, the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame.

His legendary career almost didn’t happen. After stints as a U.S. Army officer, a schoolteacher and a fishing guide, Martin decided to try tournament fishing in 1969. He visited the weigh-in of the Eufaula National B.A.S.S. Tournament in July of that year, arriving in time to see Rip Nunnery and Gerald Blanchard weigh in daily limits of 90 pounds, 15 ounces, and 88 pounds, respectively. Upon seeing those hauls, Martin told Ray Scott, “I have no business here!” Fortunately, Scott was able to convince Martin to give it a try.

Martin, who turned 80 on March 14, 2020, is the father of Scott Martin, an outstanding bass angler in his own right who has enjoyed success on both the FLW and B.A.S.S. circuits. Martin named his son after his friend, Ray Scott.