Zona's 'Bully' Story Highlights Honorees' Remarks

BFHOF Communications

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – To the three bullies on the bridge, Mark Zona has a message for you: Bass fishing is cooler than you’ll ever be.

It has perhaps never been as cool as it was Thursday evening at the White River Conference Center as the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame welcomed the 2024 induction class of Fred Arbogast, Mike McKinnis, Skeet Reese, Alfred Williams and Zona.

Zona’s poignant acceptance speech punctuated a memorable and historic evening by telling the story of what, at the time, was the biggest bass of his life. Zona recalled being heckled by three teenage boys who were perched on a small bridge overlooking the area he was fishing.

“You’re a loser. You’re a dork. You’re not gonna catch anything,” they heckled as Zona did his best to ignore them.

“Just give me a bite so I can shut them up,” he remembers thinking.

With the peanut gallery looking on, a 10-year-old Zona made another cast under the bridge and watched his line jump as a fish inhaled his pre-rigged plastic worm.

“I got ‘em,” he said. “I got ‘em!”

He landed the fish – a smallmouth – put it on his stringer and headed home, bullies in his wake, triumphant and steadfast in his love of fishing.

“All I wanted was for those three bullies to understand that bass fishing’s cool,” Zona said while holding a replica mount of the fish in his left hand.

With 23 other Hall of Fame inductees scattered throughout the crowd, the longtime Bassmaster television and Bassmaster Live analyst and host of “Zona’s Awesome Fishing Show” spoke about the opportunity that arose from a meeting at the 2005 Bassmaster Classic that allowed him to transition from tournament angler to television personality.

“Bassmaster has been a part of my life,” said Zona, who retired from his analyst role after the 2024 Elite Series season. “It was so long before I worked there but the opportunity and the group that I worked with, I took pride in that. I still take pride in that. And even though I’m not going to sit in that seat any more on Bassmaster Live, I’m there. Bassmaster is my life. It’s my family’s life.”

The induction ceremony was the culmination of the Hall’s Celebrate Bass Fishing Week, which also featured a week-long silent auction that helped raise funds that will be used toward the Hall’s conservation grants and scholarship programs.

"It was such a great evening at the White River Conference where we celebrated our 2024 Hall of Fame inductees,” said Hall of Fame president John Mazurkiewicz, “It was also a great, diverse crowd from across the bass fishing world between pro anglers, industry executives, high school and college anglers as well as a room full of blue jackets. We were thrilled to see so many Hall of Fame inductees on hand, including some who were attending for the first time. It was a great evening and on behalf of the entire Board of Directors, a massive thank you to the team at Wonders of Wildlife and Johnny Morris for the support they offer, which allows us to provide a fun and exciting evening celebrating the sport of bass fishing.”

The night also allowed the Hall of Fame to unveil its newly expanded venue located within Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium, featuring 300 square feet of new space and displays. The new layout now ensures all WOW visitors will funnel through the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame and be able to explore the artifacts and history of the sport that are on display.

“I was feeling so blessed to be downstairs [in the Hall of Fame] and look at the pictures and scrapbooks of memories and how blessed we’ve all been to spend a good part of our lives around the great sport of fishing,” said Morris.

In addition, Hall of Famer Rick Clunn, whose Bassmaster tournament career spanned six decades and more than 500 events, was given the Ray Murski Lifetime Achievement Award. Clunn is just the third recipient of the award, joining Ray Scott (2013) and Morris (2017).

Williams began fishing bass tournaments after returning from Vietnam, often as the only Black competitor – and won more than his share. He won the 1983 Bassmaster Classic divisional qualifier at Ross Barnett Reservoir, his home waters, to clinch a spot in the 1983 Classic at the Ohio River, the first African-American to do so. He finished 10th out of 42 contenders, placing ahead of fellow Hall of Famers Hank Parker, Clunn, Denny Brauer and Roland Martin.

“Since it was announced I was going to be inducted, I’ve gotten calls from people I hadn’t heard from in 30, 35 years to congratulate me on this achievement,” Williams said. “It truly is an honor for me to be standing here tonight. They’ve said I’m a trailblazer. I didn’t start out to be a trailblazer. I just started on a trail and it got to be blazing, I guess.”

Williams also recalled his affiliation with Snag Proof Lure Company, which produced some of the first floating frog-style lures. Williams made modifications to the bait, such as adding skirted legs and even weights to alter how it sat on the surface.

“All of the fishermen in here now all know that all of the frogs are based on that concept,” he added.” I don’t care what brand it is, it’s based on that concept we came up with at Snag Proof. People didn’t really believe it until they saw it in action.”

Early in his career, Reese helped lead a generation of West Coast anglers who parlayed their regional success into lengthy careers on the national bass fishing scene. Once there, he displayed a unique flair and personality that helped him stand out on and off the water.

In 1997, he won two regional Red Man tournaments, a West Coast Bass event and the Bassmaster Western Invitational Angler of The Year title, the latter of which earned Reese a spot in the Bassmaster Top 150 field and a berth in the 1998 Bassmaster Classic, thus kicking off his career as a national tour pro.

From there, he built one of the most impressive résumés of his era. It includes eight B.A.S.S. victories, including the 2009 Bassmaster Classic and five Elite Series triumphs. He also claimed the 2007 Elite Series AOY title. He’s added three Major League Fishing wins since 2018 and his career earnings of $4.09 million between B.A.S.S. and MLF puts him among the Top 5 all-time in the sport.

“I’m really here doing this right now,” Reese said as he looked out at a packed banquet hall. “I look out over this room and I see so many people that influenced the sport and without them we wouldn’t be here today. So, for me to be on stage and be recognized, it’s not something I dreamed of doing. I never thought this would happen to me. I was just a kid from California who loved to catch fish. To be up here and be doing this right now is really humbling. I’m grateful and thankful for the opportunity to be up here and be part of history.

“Who would have thought some little tow-haired kid from Northern California was going to make black and yellow popular and bring a Bassmaster Classic title back to California."

While Reese was a star on the water, McKinnis and the team at JM Associates, the production company founded by his late father, Jerry, provided the television platform where those stars took shape and connected with fans and viewers around the world.

McKinnis and Co. transformed the way fishing fans consume content around the sport. His productions of one-off fishing tournament programs in the mid-1990s attracted the attention of ESPN, which tapped JM to launch the network’s coverage of the then-new FLW Tour in 1996. In 2015, McKinnis helped shepherd in a new era in tournament coverage when the Bassmaster Classic was live-streamed to the world on Bassmaster.com.

The breakthrough production was an immediate success and helped spawn an era during which live broadcasts of on-the-water action have become the norm across the sport, as has live coverage of Bassmaster events on Fox Sports networks – all under McKinnis’ watch.

In typical television producer form, though, McKinnis deflected credit to his colleagues over the years at JM Associates.

“Let me get through the list of the shoulders that I’ve been standing on all these years,” he said before rattling off a roster of editors, engineers, camera operators, executives, on-air hosts and his father, Jerry.

Among those mentioned was longtime editor David Lipke, who’s worked alongside McKinnis for nearly a quarter century.

“If you’ve seen some highlight footage of bass anglers over the last 24 years and it made you want to get up and go fishing, there’s a 95-percent chance that guy cut the footage,” McKinnis said. “I’m standing up here getting this honor, but he and all of these people that I’m talking about are the reason.

“None of us would be here without my best friend, my dad, Jerry McKinnis. I am unbelievably proud to be up here and be honored like this with him. It’s just crazy awesome. To know that the Hall of Fame holds me in this high regard means the world to me.”

Arbogast will be remembered as one of the most creative innovators of fishing lures the sport has ever seen. Born in 1894 in Akron, Ohio, he made a name for himself in distance casting competitions before delving into lure design and utilizing new materials in the 1930s. While seeking an alternative to the labor-intensive feather and hair dressings for his bass baits, he hit upon the idea of rubber skirts, drawing on his experience working for Goodyear and B.F. Goodrich in his hometown since high school.

He called his creation the Hula Skirt, and he used it on his Hawaiian Wiggler (a precursor to the buzzbait), Hula Popper and Hula Dancer. His skirt design led to the use of rubber and other materials to make pliable skirts for a multitude of lures still popular today. By the time of his sudden, premature death in 1947, at the age of 53, Arbogast had designed nearly a dozen deadly bass baits, including the iconic Jitterbug.

During the ceremony, PRADCO presented the Hall of Fame with a check for $12,000, which represents the proceeds from the sale of a limited-edition series of Jitterbugs that were made to commemorate Arbogast’s induction.

To see a replay of the full induction ceremony, click here.