Taking a Bow

After 33 years on top of professional bass fishing, the sport's undisputed king, Kevin VanDam, takes off his crown

By Joe Sills

January 29, 2024

Few people in professional bass fishing retire. In a sport that feels like a grab-bag of NASCAR, professional wrestling and tall tales, the prizes are too sweet, the spotlight too bright, the itch of competition too strong and the sponsorship deals too abundant for most diehard competitors to willingly call it quits.

“There are plenty of people actively fishing today who were in the game before I started,” says Kevin VanDam, a 56-year-old angler widely considered the sport’s greatest competitor of all time. But unlike them, VanDam is moving away from the grueling schedule of a competitive angler.

Rick Clunn, at 76, is still fishing and cashing checks on the Bassmaster Elite Series, the sport’s lifeblood tour. At 72, Larry Nixon is chasing the dream and doing the same. At Major League Fishing — the sport’s other top-tier circuit — 65-year-old Tommy Biffle is pursuing six-figure paychecks and hulking, chrome trophies. All three share the water with anglers from a mix of generations: Generation Z, fresh out of college and bristling with a new, electronics-fueled way of fishing; millennials, enjoying their fame as content stars; and Generation X, still peaking with the right combination of experience and athleticism.

In 33 years of chasing bass and big paydays, VanDam has a long track record of success catching America’s most popular gamefish. He’s captured seven Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles, an FLW Angler of the Year and a Major League Fishing Angler of the Year. His accolades include four Bassmaster Classic championships and 29 major tournament wins split between B.A.S.S., FLW and Major League Fishing. VanDam has weighed-in an estimated 15,000 pounds of bass and earned more than $7 million in tournament winnings — and now he’s cashing out. The 2023 Major League Fishing season was his last at the pro level. “I don’t want to be that guy who is out there past his prime,” VanDam says, echoing over a truck speaker en route to one of the last professional tournaments of his career, on Cayuga Lake in New York. “I’m still healthy. I’m still pretty much physically able to do all of the things I enjoy in the outdoors. There are things I want to do and places I want to go that I might not be able to in 15 years.”

VanDam isn’t about to wither away in retirement. He waxes poetic about going to a Metallica concert with his son. He mingles with country music stars such as Luke Bryan. His phone is littered with messages from NFL and NHL athletes. And he’s still fishing at a world-class level.

VanDam took home a major championship as recently as 2021. In doing so, he nudged younger anglers Jacob Wheeler and Jason Lambert out for the top spot and a $100,000 payday on the Tennessee River. In 2022, he finished fifth in MLF’s season-long points standings. He has plenty of fuel in the tank.

“The best comparison is Michael Jordan,” says Jody White, senior manager of website editorial at Major League Fishing. “Kevin is on the short list of best athletes ever in any sport, whether that’s Lebron James, Jordan, Babe Ruth or Tom Brady. VanDam is the bass fishing guy on that list.” A 2002 ESPY Award from ESPN attests to VanDam’s crossover appeal.

White followed VanDam closely at the 2011 Bassmaster Classic in New Orleans. There, in his final win at the “Super Bowl of Bass Fishing,” the Michigander edged out long-time rival Aaron Martens to retain his throne. Two decades into his career, VanDam was fishing at an elite level that White says left him in awe. “You had dreams of Aaron Martens winning the tournament, but there was a point when KVD seemed to flip a switch and put everyone away. The way he fished and the consistency with which he won made it look like he could just do that.”

This past March, the wonder kid from Kalamazoo announced that he will stop competing in professional tournaments. He will hoist no more trophies and won’t have to spend upward of 230 days of the year on the road. For the first time since 1990, VanDam’s schedule will be open.

A Classic Start

In 1992, VanDam became the youngest person ever to win Bassmaster Angler of the Year. At 25, he had a bullseye on his back, and an ensuing march up the professional ranks seemed to make that target glow. He took home a major win in 1995 and a pair of them in 1997 and 1999. By 2001, he was a Bassmaster Classic champion, and his boat was being followed by throngs of spectators as he fished, their propellers often idling into coveted fishing areas.

VanDam was so popular that he often had to avoid fishing the best stretches of water, leaving areas where he knew there were tournament-winning fish open to his competitors in attempt to obscure his location from fans. “He was huge,” recalls Denny Brauer, an angler who at the peak of his own popularity was a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman. “He came out of the gate with a good run, and with each accomplishment, he kicked a few more doors open. All of a sudden, there was this great young angler coming out of the North that was opening doors for other people and fostering a lot of dreams.”

At tackle stores, VanDam was flocked by admirers interested in siphoning knowledge on everything from knot tying to reel capacity and weight composition. And while the advent of live-streaming brought about a slight reduction in on-the-water followers, he has largely lived with a target painted on his back for the better part of three decades.

Whether inherent or adapted, VanDam has learned to live with his celebrity. He’s famously generous with his time around fans, media and fellow competitors, but after more than three decades, he is starting to shake off that bullseye. “Fishing tournaments is not my only life, you know,” VanDam says. “I love the competition. It’s been great from that standpoint, but I’ve got a lot of other interests and passions, as well.”

As the red-and-black graphics of VanDam’s Toyota Tundra and matching 21-foot Nitro bass boat bulldoze by the outskirts of Buffalo, New York, the man behind the wheel finds himself contemplating new dreams. He dreams of a return to the salmon streams of Alaska, where he once spent a blissful but brief three days. He dreams of once again tracking elk in the towering mountain ranges of the West and mule deer in the arid, empty sunrises of Texas. He dreams of tropical, misty evenings surrounded by a cacophony of foreign insects in the Amazon. Mostly, he dreams of Michigan.

Southwest Michigan is a deceptively beautiful slice of America. The landscape, bursting around the capillaries of asphalt forming a thin web between Chicago and Grand Rapids, was shaped by glaciers during the last ice age. At times, VanDam’s homeland seems as though it were hand-painted with the broad, flourishing brush strokes of painter Bob Ross — a dizzying array of habits that somehow flow together in certain seasons like sinews of green, burgundy, cerulean and gold. The oak savannas, wetlands, fens, forests, beaches and cave systems dazzle when they’re not coated in the white blanket of winter.

The woodlands have long held the keys to VanDam’s heart. From age 10, he ventured out into this world in search of white tail deer and all manner of sport fish, from bass to walleye and perch. When he wasn’t outside, he was watching the outside on the small screen. “The Sunday morning block on TNN was a bucket-list thing,” he says. “You got Jimmy Houston, Roland Martin, Hank Parker, Bill Dance and the Bassmaster all in a row. I was watching guys like Rick Clunn, Larry Nixon, Denny Brauer and Guido Hibdon — and of course In-Fisherman.”

Those personalities curated a curiosity that pushed VanDam to enter local bass tournaments. He wanted to know what made anglers like the ones he saw on television tick. Fishing in tournaments, he figured, was the best way to put himself in their shoes. He excelled at tournaments beyond all reasonable expectations and used his winnings to purchase 400 acres in his home state near the house where he and his wife, Sherry, have raised sons Jackson and Nicholas. The VanDam family has artfully tended to their own private piece of Michigan for about 25 years.

“It’s a mix of bottomland and hardwoods,” VanDam says. “We have about 100 acres around the house and 300 nearby. We manage the overall habitat to make it better, and we’ve watched its transition over the years. We are always thinking about cutting timber or hedges, about planting native grasses or building brush piles so that the turkeys have good nesting areas.”

This is where VanDam wants to spend most of his newfound free time. He wants to doggedly pursue year-round forest management projects. He wants to seek out hard-earned, mature white tail deer bred in his backyard. And he wants to fill the rest of his time traveling, creating content and raising awareness for conservation projects around the country.

VanDam believes public interest in bass fishing is at an all-time high. High schools and colleges are fielding tournament teams, and many of the competitions take place on the same waters where top-flight pros battle. And the fields can rise into the hundreds of boats.

Dipping out of the tournament scene, VanDam says, will give him a chance to sustain the groundswell of momentum sport fishing gained as people sought reprieve from the Covid-19 pandemic outdoors and youth programs bulged with new members. “A whole lot of people, new people, are turned on to the outdoors right now,” he says. “But to be able to keep people involved, we’ve got to have good habitat.”

In 2014, VanDam and his wife created the KVD Foundation. Along with education and pediatric healthcare, the charity’s founding ethos revolves around conservation, having supported such groups as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the March of Dimes and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Outdoor Adventure Center. The foundation, he says, is key to his next chapter in life.

The Final Scene

Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris is a friend, and VanDam calls him the “greatest American conservationist of the modern era.” Since nearly the beginning, VanDam has carried sponsorships from Morris’ Bass Pro Shops and White River Marine. It’s a partnership that afforded him opportunities to gain knowledge of conservation projects from Florida to Alaska.

“That’s what has really inspired me more than anything,” VanDam says, bouncing along a stretch of Interstate 90. “With Johnny, I saw firsthand a lot of the work that he does in conservation. I saw the difference it makes when he gets involved. And listen, I’m no Johnny Morris by any means, but I have the ability to be an amplifier. In a lot of cases, I can bring awareness to projects, problems or initiatives that are going to benefit a lot of people in the outdoors.

“We want to raise more awareness for issues like increasing phosphate discharge on Lake Okeechobee,” he continues. “I realize that I have a different opportunity than some other people might have to bring awareness to some of these problem issues, and some of these projects that need an extra boost.”

While VanDam’s foundation has been around for nearly a decade, he and other high-profile bass anglers provide an inspiration to further push the envelope. VanDam says he’s inspired by fellow bass star Mike Iaconelli’s IKE Foundation, a nonprofit that introduces inner-city youth to fishing and the outdoors. Iaconelli teaches casting, catching and knot-tying in such waters as New York’s Central Park to audiences that have never held a fishing rod.

Iaconelli and VanDam have been friends and competitors since the 1998 Bassmaster Invitational at Virginia’s Buggs Island. The unique format was a precursor to today’s pro-am competitions, and placed Iaconelli — then a college senior with hair down to his elbows and a ZZ Top-style beard — in the back of VanDam’s boat. They both finished on the podium.

“I can imagine where Kevin is at right now,” says Iaconelli, who also has Bassmaster Classic and Angler of the Year wins to his name. “I can still walk past the Bassmaster Classic trophy in my office and remember an amazing day, an amazing week. But the wins are fleeting. This feels more permanent. I am already meeting young adults that say they were with me in Central Park and they love fishing now. I am meeting people that went to college and tell me that they won our scholarship. You hear those stories, and that feeling is way better than a Classic win.”

As VanDam aims toward a pretournament meeting at Cayuga Lake in Union Springs, New York, he says he wants to do for children’s hospital patients what the Philadelphia-raised Iaconelli is doing for inner-city youth. His two sons were both born prematurely. The difficult, early days of their lives still resonate within his soul.

There’s no question that professional bass fishing’s greatest angler holds a powerful megaphone. Iaconelli, who has hosted shows with National Geographic and runs one of the sport’s most popular podcasts, believes VanDam has everything needed to make the KVD Foundation his life’s work. It’s that loudspeaker VanDam wants to continue to carry after he pulls his boat and trailers away from a tournament ramp for the final time.

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