Northwest Wild Country Radio Station

SHREVEPORT, La. - To even the most disinterested Pacific Northwest salmon junkie, Skeet Reese's recent victory in the 39th Bassmaster Classic was a thing of beauty.

Among a field of 51 competitors that leaned heavily toward the "Bass States" (88 percent of the 2009 field hails from east of the Rockies) the outspoken Californian became the second West Coast angler to win the Super Bowl of bass fishing in four years, duplicating Luke Clausen's 2006 Classic title run.

Joel blog mug It's part of a tide change that's slowly - but undeniably - changing the face of professional bass fishing. After 30-plus years of Southern dominance, that tide is flowing hard to the West.

"It was about time ...": "Seeing how we’ve had 39 of these things, I’d say it was about time someone out there started making a showing ..."

That little e-mail jab hit my inbox at 9:26 a.m. Sunday, the last day of the Classic, from a Razorback buddy of mine who was on the Red River in Bossier City, La. covering the event for ESPN. I can't say it was unprovoked: earlier that morning, I had cranked out an e-mail to RazorBow that said something like "Skeet will win in '09, Clausen won in '06, might as well call it the 'WestMaster Classic,'..."

He's right about the South's longstanding asswhupping, though. For the first 31 years of the Big Bass Brouhaha, the "Bass States" held the Classic trophy in a figure-four leglock. That lock started to loosen a little in 2002 when Oregon State alum Jay Yelas took the Classic trophy back to Corvallis, Ore., but BASS' biggest stage has overwhelmingly been the playground of anglers from places like Broken Bow, Okla., Prosperity, S.C. and Mount Ida, Ark.

The tide change: Credit Yelas and his extraordinary 2002-03 campaign with the first significant heavy lifting for the West. The former Beaverland steelhead bum not only won the '02 Classic, he swept 2003 Angler of the Year honors in both BASS and FLW and grabbed the kind of West Coastie attention that ironman West Coast-based competitors like Gary Klein - while enormously respected - hadn't quite been able to generate.

Clausen pushed the tide even further in 2004 when, as an unknown rookie with a brand new degree from Eastern Washington University, he walked away with the Forrest Wood Cup on Logan Martin Lake (see photo at left).

Southern California's Aaron Martens followed in 2005 with BASS Angler of the Year honors, the highlight of a three-year run that put him within a hair of bass-fishing greatness: Martens finished second THREE TIMES in four years at the Classic (2002, '04 & '05), including a soul-sucking 6-ounce loss to Kevin Van Dam in the '05 Pittsburgh event.

Clausen tore it up again with a record-smashing performance at the '06 Classic on Lake Toho, making him the youngest member of bass' mythical "Million Dollar Club".

Roll tide, roll.

Dominance in '07: Lingering naysayers choked down a hearty helping of humble pie in 2007 as Reese outlasted VanDam in one of the closest BASS AOY races in history, and Yelas pulled down a second FLW AOY award in five years, giving the West a clean sweep of the sport's two MVP trophies.

Californian Michael Bennett took the handoff in 2008 with a win in the Forrest Wood Cup, carrying the baton forward to the West Coast's anchorman.

Skeet-shooting star: Which brings us back around to Reese. After winning his first Classic in 10 trips (including a maddening 6-ounce loss to Boyd Duckett in 2007), he's a Happy Meal short of $2 million in career tournament winnings. He's finished in the money in 103 of the 133 tournaments he's entered in his career, including just over 50 pecent (67 of 133) where he's cashed a top-20 check.

Whenever and wherever Skeet shows up to compete, he's a threat to win, thanks in no small part to the versatility he developed fishing the West Coast. And a close look at his tournament performances over the past 3 years reveals that the kid from Auburn is an exceptionally dangerous angler who appears to be getting better: Reese's average finish in his last 27 tournaments is 12th.

And while VanDam is the unquestioned Tiger Woods of bass fishing, Reese has settled into a groove that makes him the most intriguing potential longtime rival to the KVD Empire. The head-to-head score in the last 40 tournaments Reese and KVD have competed in?

Reese 20 Vandam 20.

Roll tide, roll: As the FLW Tour and BASS Elite Series start to crank up for 2009, it's impossible to deny the ever-increasing power base of West Coast anglers. Reese's Classic championship makes it 8 of the last 28 of the four yearly "majors" (FLW & BASS championships and AOY awards) won by westerners.

That's just over 25 percent of the major titles for a pool of competitors that make up maybe 10 percent of the FLW Tour and Elite Series, the two big-time bass circuits.

The tide has changed. And, as my southern counterpart pointed out, it's about time.

-JS