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Norman,
OK. –
Final votes have been tallied, and the BASS ZONE staff hereby announce the 2007 All-Pro team, a collection of past, present and future megastars from both of the major tours. There's no trip to the Pro Bowl in Honolulu attached, no photo shoot at the Playboy Mansion, just glory based on effort, execution and a few points for style.
While these awards may roughly track the AOY races from the Elite Series and the FLW Tour, voters are not required to vote based only on season-long performance. Indeed an angler who does well overall but worse than normal given his past performance may drop out, while a pro whose performance in a few events stands out or who finds some other way to make an outsized impact on the sport may vault up higher than his performance might otherwise indicate.
FIRST TEAM ALL PRO
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Skeet Reese
– The glory boy, with a surfer's looks and a QB's attitude, our MVP came into his own this year, with a win on the Potomac and an AOY trophy to bring back to California. But, he's not Tom Brady. He’s got a wide receiver’s attitude: “Just give me the damn ball!” to quote
Keyshawn. He can bring home the big play but is still willing to go across the middle for the dangerous grab.
When things got tight against KVD in the AOY race, he took on past demons and beat the Kalamazoo kid on northern smallmouth water. Then he worked his way south to the Potomac and Toho and continued the assault. Unlike 2006, when KVD missed the AOY largely as a result of his Santee Cooper
DQ, this year Skeet just flat out ripped the title away from him. |
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Kevin VanDam – For any other angler, second place in Angler of the Year is a dream season. For
KVD, it's akin to being the Buffalo Bills. Second place provides him with no satisfaction. There may be no "I" in "team," but there is one in "Kevin" and that makes him the greediest (in a good way) angler on the planet.
No weight is ever enough, no finish is ever high enough. Put in a football context, the so-called "Tiger Woods of Fishing" isn't a quarterback or running back. He's a linebacker or standup defensive end, ready to jump linemen and crush running backs in his all-out pursuit of the quarterback. He's Lawrence Taylor, Dick Butkus and Ray Lewis rolled into one. No question he's gonna come out of the gate angry in
'08 |
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Jay Yelas
– The "nice guy" on the list, Yelas keeps on smiling as he takes everyone else's money. He'll knock you down and give you a helping hand back up. The Energizer Rabbit of fishing just kept going and going, to another AOY title. The last time he won one; he used a spinning rod more than at any other point in his career. This time he went crazy with a
swimbait. Jay's so even-keeled that you might forget he's a scary-good competitor. When he won the Classic, he led it wire-to-wire and caught the big fish each of the three days, the only angler ever to do that. |
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Boyd Duckett
– Show me the money, Boyd! Two giant wins totaling nearly a million bucks. Switching sports for a moment, he's making bank like
ARod, just without the bad PR campaign. Boyd wins when it counts, grabbing the Classic and a Major. He leads the league in Web Gems and Plays of the Week. He’s our sport’s Devin Hester. Every time he goes out there, he's liable to make the big score, turn the game around and make everyone else look foolish. |
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Mark Davis
– Just when everyone counts Mark out, he proves them wrong; again and again and again. Over the years, he's battled weight problems, arm problems and he's gotten his eyesight fixed. He had an FLW Tour win this year and easily made it to the Forrest Wood Cup. He's Brett
Favre, a sure Hall of Famer who refuses to consider the possibility that he may be on the downside of his career. In fact, ardent fans of the sport know that he's just getting better. Adding to his achievements on the water, Davis distinguished himself through his service to the
PAA. And to show just how important he is to the sport, his decision to return to BASS competition was the off-the-water story of the year. |
SECOND TEAM
ALL PRO
Aaron Martens – It hurts us to list the original California Kid on the second team. He's had a lot of seconds in his career and no doubt he still feels the pain. But he showed that he could capitalize on home field advantage at the Delta, and he went on to finish 3rd overall in the points race. He's Belichick (minus the cheating), with a mind that just works differently than everyone else's. Everyone else is asleep dreaming of big bass, and he's still digging through his tackle box for another old-school trick to confuse the opposition or a new knot to improve his execution.
Jared Lintner – Where did this guy come from? Like Tony Romo last year, or Kurt Warner a decade ago, he burst out of nowhere. For a while he was the third wheel in a Skeet/KVD AOY race. He was very much deserving of a spot on this list, but it took a lot of last-minute ballot stuffing from the hometown crowd to get the quiet, mustachioed Californian into his rightful place.
Terry Scroggins – Big Show continued his surge to the elite class of professional anglers this year. We all knew what he could do with the flipping stick and power techniques. We all knew that the St. Johns River and a few other Florida ponds were in his wheelhouse. But this year he broadened his horizons and showed that just like Walter Payton, he could make you miss as easily as he could run you over. At Smith Mountain Lake he made the final day with a dropshot on offshore humps. Do you think the competition wanted to know that he's developed confidence with something other than a broomstick in his hands?
Steve Kennedy – Remember earlier this year when NY Giants defensive end Osi Umeniyora embarrassed Eagles offensive tackle Winston Justice in a nationally televised game to the tune of 6 sacks? That was Kennedy at Clear Lake. This all-world talent became a big hitter, like the names on the Mitchell report; only his “performance enhancing substances” weren’t from BALCO -- they were from Huddleston and Basstrix. On the heels of that record, he is just coming into his own as an angler, and that's downright scary.
Fred Roumbanis – Fred is an enigma, even to fishing fanatics. Half of the fishing public doesn't know whether he's from California or Oklahoma. The other half can't figure out how to pronounce his name. Like fellow California emigrant Troy Polamalu, he presents a different profile but the results speak for themselves.
A few years ago, he was floundering on the FLW Tour, living check to check, sleeping in his truck. This year, not only did a new family situation set him on the right path, but after the Bassmaster American, he left North Carolina with two hundred fifty large burning a hole in his pocket. He finished 12th in the AOY standings, but unlike some of those who came in ahead of him, he had a breakout year. He even developed a signature lure, the IMA "Roumba," an odd duck of a wakebait. This vote is based not only on his 2007 performance, but also on expectations of big things to come.
HONORABLE MENTION
Todd Faircloth – The quiet Texan followed up a 2006 Elite Series win with a 6th place finish in the AOY race.
Ike – Not a great season by his personal standards, but he's the clear leader in the fan voting, despite the mixed bag reaction he gets in some quarters.
Shin Fukae – Detractors say that when FLW tightens its off-limits rules next year, he'll fall by the wayside, but he hasn't done anything against the rules yet, and the combination of an AOY title and then this year's 2nd place finish show that he can flat-out put fish in the boat.
David Dudley – Most of his peers still consider him the best pure fisherman on the FLW Tour.
Derek Remitz – Consensus Rookie of the Year (as a nod to University of Oklahoma alum Jeffreys, we'll compare him to Adrian Peterson).
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