“The tragedy in life is not what men suffer, but what they miss.”
With the announcement of Rick Clunn’s departure from the Elite Series, another era has ended. Losing both VanDam and Clunn in the same year may be more than I can handle, as each occupied a spot in my best-ever column. While KVD achieved more in terms of accolades, perhaps no competitive angler was as transformative as Clunn.
It’s no coincidence that – when interviewing tournament competitors decades ago – they all considered Clunn their icon. VanDam included. For 25 years, Clunn was the best bass tournament angler in the world. He won four Bassmaster Classics from 1976 to 1990, adding an Angler of the Year title in 1988. Following this period of dominance, he took down a Megabucks title, added a handful of Invitational wins, and went back-to-back on the St. Johns River as a 70-year-old.
Clunn won several other major titles, including two U.S. Opens, a Red Man All-American and three FLW tournaments that combined to pay out a half-million dollars.
It’s been said that Clunn was the best big-money player in the history of the game, and I believe that to be true. Clunn’s focus was immediately apparent when watching him dissect shallow cover. If he ever got rattled, he never showed it. Clunn’s approach was one built on proven, reliable patterns.
But it was more than titles that separated Clunn from the rest. As we often see with great athletes, Clunn was far ahead of his time. While the media insisted the key to big-league bassing was experience on the water and the ability to make a perfect pitch, Clunn knew there was more to the game. A higher level.
Rick Clunn will go down as the creator of the greatest concept in professional tournament fishing: intuitive angling.
Once scoffed at by the masses, today the mental aspect of bass fishing is regarded as a major component. Whether it’s “fishing free” or “getting in the zone”, we see examples all the time today. A few others experimented in the intuitive side early on, but Clunn brought it to the masses by using it to win.
As an early disciple of Clunn, I studied his ways and read everything I could find on the man. Recommended journals became nightstand favorites. Books-on-tape filled the cassette deck of my truck as I crisscrossed the eastern U.S., trying to tie into what Clunn seemed to have figured out.
During this period, Clunn hosted a multi-day workshop at his home and property to teach the concepts of intuitive angling. I attended, and still have my notes, 22 years later.
At the event, others and I learned the basics of survival, and how losing the ego is key to extreme challenges, both in life and in fishing. We learned how to enter into nature and truly observe what’s happening. The importance of detail, the futility of second-hand information and the advantage of a road less traveled.
Clunn divulged his original pattern principle, a method he used for the first decade of his career to conquer foreign bodies of water. He detailed basic technical aspects, like hooks and lure vibrations, before transitioning into the complexities of cosmic perception. The way we think of something is nothing like how we perceive it, we learned.
Tournament practice was discussed. Discipline. Self-reliance. All the things we hear nowadays, but were still viewed as witchcraft in the 1990s.
Most importantly, class attendees learned, first-hand, of "the zone." The place that everyone talked of, but only Clunn seemed to occupy.
The culmination of the 1990 Bassmaster Classic, Clunn reported, was the first time in his life he no longer feared death. He had reached a form of bliss.
If all of this sounds far-fetched, I encourage you to dig up that final weigh-in on YouTube, and watch Clunn as he makes his charge, bagging the biggest limit of the tournament. You’ll see it in his eyes. It’s the zone; Clunn just knew what to call it.
Visualization. How to win. Shutting out distractions and surrendering to a higher purpose. Time management. All were covered.
Clunn discussed the beginnings of many major techniques, including the first square-billed crankbaits, and how the lure designers of Big Os and Big Ns burned the baits through cover, uncovering the secrets to reaction bites, a technique they personally shared with Clunn.
We learned how to power-fish for all species, in all regions of the country, something we watched Clunn do when he waylaid smallmouths on his way to victory on the St. Lawrence River. The same way he’d obliterate the competition on the St. Johns River with a spinnerbait nearly 30 years later.
We heard how he designed a crankbait specifically for a certain water condition that he wouldn’t see again for a year. How he laid in bed, visualizing how the bass would attack it, then later experienced the very same bite on the identical landscape.
Witchcraft? Not quite. It’s the culmination of the bite you knew you’d get just before you felt it. The dock that just looked good, so you stopped. The U-turn on the final day to water you hadn’t practiced on.
It’s the zone. Rick Clunn brought us that, and we can never repay him.
Last of the gunslingers, and forever a champion.
(Joe Balog is the often-outspoken owner of Millennium Promotions, Inc., an agency operating in the fishing and hunting industries. A former Bassmaster Open and EverStart Championship winner, he's best known for his big-water innovations and hardcore fishing style. He's a popular seminar speaker, product designer and author, and is considered one of the most influential smallmouth fishermen of modern times.)
