FIRST CAST : JOEL SHANGLE
REDCREST 2022 : THE GOAT
When I was a child growing up in an extremely small town in northern Nevada , there was a time when every waking thought was occupied by ( of all things ) boxing .
Yep . The sweet science . Not baseball , not football , not basketball . Not even fishing or hunting . My third-grade PE teacher spent a couple of hours one week teaching us the basics of boxing (“ left hand up , left foot forward , jab , jab , cross ”), and as sometimes happens with 8-year-olds , my imagination ran away with me . I became enamored with the fight game and began an obsessive hunt for any information I could dig up about the history of the sweet science .
Not long after , I came across something that transcended every boxing book I ’ d ever scrounged up : a board game called “ Title Bout ” by a company named Avalon Hill . Without digging too deep into the minutiae , Title Bout was a simple but well-researched game that assigned attributes to the greatest boxers of all time and allowed you to simulate matchups between the best fighters in history .
You could pit , for example , Muhammed Ali against Jack Johnson , Sugar Ray Leonard against Sugar Ray Robinson and Marvin Hagler versus Harry Greb . It was a game-simulation geek ’ s dream come true , and it allowed me to simulate that Henry Armstrong , Joe Louis , Willie Pep , Roberto Duran and George Foreman were in the same arena , duking it out .
In 2022 , the bass fishing world will call that “ REDCREST .” Grand Lake , Oklahoma will be the arena , and it won ’ t be a simulation .
A Grand lineup
The lineup of 41 anglers competing in REDCREST 2022 – a list that includes the best of the best from four different decades – is perhaps the greatest tournament roster of all time . That probably sounds like hyperbole , but it ’ s not . The field boasts combined tournament winnings of nearly $ 80 million . You don ’ t have to look very hard to spot the history-makers in the REDCREST 2022 lineup . There ’ s Kevin VanDam , the only bass angler in the world to surpass the $ 6 million mark in career winnings and the only bass pro to earn eight tour-level AOY awards . And there ’ s Scott Suggs , the first angler in the history of the sport to claim a $ 1 million payday for a single tournament ( the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup ). Oh , and there ’ s David Dudley , the only angler in the world whose trophy room can display four FLW Tour AOY trophies ( and the only other angler besides VanDam who has cleared the $ 4 million mark in winnings ). And that guy , Jacob Wheeler : He ’ s the only angler in the world who owns five Bass Pro Tour trophies ( plus a General Tire World Championship trophy , a Bass Pro Tour AOY award , a Forrest Wood Cup , an FLW Tour Super Tournament trophy and the hardware from an All-American championship ). He was also the fastest angler in history to the $ 1 and $ 2 million marks in tournament winnings .
Scan down the list of anglers on page 42 and you ’ ll see a REDCREST field that owns over 50 Angler of the Year titles or major tour-level championships , starting with Mark Davis ’ and VanDam ’ s dominance in the mid-1990 and continuing through Jordan Lee , Ott DeFoe and Wheeler ’ s ascension in the 2010s and 2020s .
REDCREST 2022 will truly be history happening before our eyes , and the boxing-simulation-game child inside of me can ’ t wait . Whether you hold this issue of Bass Fishing magazine in your hands as you stroll through the REDCREST Outdoor Sports Expo in Tulsa , or received it in your mailbox like usual , please join us . Immersive coverage of REDCREST 2022 on Grand Lake can be found at MajorLeagueFishing . com March 20-27 .
jOEL SHANGLE , EXECUTIVE editor
6 MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM | FEBRUARY-MARCH 2022