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Buffalo, NY -- Erie had its angry moments and its casualties on Day 1, but no angler fell as far as Steve Kennedy.
Headed into this event he was in 11th place in the Angler of the Year standings, so he did not have a realistic chance at the AOY title, and assuming he catches a fish tomorrow and at Oneida, he’s almost assured a Classic spot, so he took a calculated risk. Bass tournament coverage often focuses on the gambles that paid off, but Kennedy’s choice did not work to his benefit.
On a day when you had to go to 90th place before you found an angler who didn’t catch a limit, it was surprising to see the Alabama pro’s name with a bunch of goose eggs next to it. There’s a story behind his bottom of the barrel position:
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“I made the big run, I took a risk,” he said. “I actually ran past Dunkirk. (The fishing) was a lot tougher than I expected, but I managed to catch 17-06 (on my scale). My partner had right at 12 pounds. I think he had 11-15.”
Kennedy gave himself well over three hours to return to the weigh-in, which he said “should have been plenty of time,” but despite pre-tournament preparation that should have enabled him to overcome his obstacles, a series of mechanical failures doomed his day.
“I got out there and speared a couple of waves. I had a spare pump, plus we had the two pumps running. I got it all clear and got running again,” he said. But after another thirty minutes or so, he noticed that the boat was sluggish again. The boat was taking on water, as expected, but none of the three pumps were running.
“Three pumps. One of them is running and not pumping. One of them wasn’t pumping at all. And then the big one, the big spare, you could take it apart and it would spin but it wouldn’t pump any water so I don’t know what was going on with it either,” the frustrated Kennedy stated. |
“At that point we realized we were taking on a lot of water so we stopped to try to fix a pump and the first wave or two came by and we were swamped, flush with the top of the boat. It was pretty scary. To clear the water I actually got it semi on plane, got the nose up and let the water pour off the back. It actually got water into the engine somehow, either through the oil or through the gas tanks, so the engine was cutting out. So we had the Coast Guard come and look for us. We actually made it to the bank under our own power but it was five miles out there. It took us an hour to get into calm water to even think about working on it and we didn’t have enough time to get it fixed and get it in.”
While the water was rough, he said that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. “They were not that big, honestly. They’d probably call ‘em two footers on the scale, so four or five feet. When you were sitting down, you would lose the horizon. Actually it probably would have been easier if they were bigger. They were criss-crossing. It wasn’t any big deal other than that I lost three pumps.”
He’s normally one of the most unflappable personalities on the tour, and he’s piloted his boat through the worst the country’s big waters can dish out in previous events, but he confessed that the lack of control scared him: “That’s the first time I’ve ever been nervous. When you don’t have bilge pumps and you don’t have power and you’re five miles from the bank….we were trying to give people coordinates of where we were. The Coast Guard never got to us in an hour and a half. But I wasn’t worried for my life. We had life jackets, we had throw cushions.” |
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Despite his troubles and the resulting zeros on the standings sheet, Kennedy defiantly noted that he “did make it in.”
Just another day at the office….if your office is the spin cycle of a washing machine.
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