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Weatherford, Tex. – One could surmise that having a BASS career that included 285 entries and 25 Classic appearances that an angler could find himself becoming bored with the repetitive nature of his occupation; not the case with Gary Klein.
The 50-year-old Klein won his first Bassmaster tournament in 1979 at the Bassmaster Arizona Invitational on Lake Powell, and has won at least one BASS event in every decade since. All told; he has racked up a total of eight BASS victories and has cashed checks in 197 of his 285 tournament entries.
With all of his accomplishments, Klein has not lost his desire to compete, but his secret to his longevity in the sport has not been that desire, but his love of fishing. “I still fish for what I feel are the right reasons,” Klein said. “I’m still addicted to the competition, but I just love fishing; that’s why I still do it.”
Klein has a reputation for working very hard to master new techniques, and it has been said that he will not add a new style of fishing to his competitive arsenal until he has practiced it for a year and deemed it worthy. “I do take being versatile very seriously,” he said. “I spend a lot of time learning new techniques, it’s my desire be a student of this sport, and that makes me want to learn new things.”
With his position as one of the greatest anglers in the history of the sport in mind, Klein feels that aside from a couple of missed opportunities, he has had a decent year in 2007. “I haven’t had a super year thus far,” Klein said. “But it’s not been a bad year, in fact I moved up nine places after Smith Mountain.”
[BZ Note: Klein’s 20th place finish at the Blue Ridge Brawl moved him into 20th place in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year Standings]. |
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“Shaw [Grigsby, Klein’s travel and practice partner on tour] and I knew after one day of practice at Smith Mountain that the lake wasn’t as tough as some of the early reports were saying,” he told The BASS ZONE. “We felt pretty good about it, and as a result, both finished fairly high.” [BZ Note: Grigsby finished the Blue Ridge Brawl in 36th place to go with Klein’s 20th place].
Klein said that he is looking forward to the rest of 2007, “I like the schedule ahead of us,” he reported. “I have history on these bodies of water and am excited to see where things end up.”
Klein has also been experiencing some success off the water as well. His years of experience as owner of a company in the lure business have helped him in his dealing with Spro, with whom he is designing a series of lures for release at ICAST in July.
In typical Klein fashion, he has been working to perfect a line of jigs for nearly a year, and he says that anglers will be pleased to see them. “I used the flipping jig for half of my fish at the 2007 Classic,” Klein said. “We are also working on a shaky head and a vibrating jig in the vain of a Chatterbait.”
Klein said that while it had been reported that both of his jigs at the Classic had been Spro prototypes, however, the deepwater version was not. “We have not been building a football jig,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we won’t, but we aren’t working on it yet.”
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The real difference in Klein’s jigs is that an angler usually has to design a jig head around a hook, but with Spro’s connections to
Gamakatsu, he was able to start with the hook. “I have been able to design everything, from start to finish,” Klein said. “I’ve not been able to do that before, and it makes a difference in the final product.”
Klein said that along with the flipping jig, his ‘Shake and Bake,’ is a vibrating swimming jig that fixes what he feels are problems with the original
Chatterbait. “We started with a stronger Spro clip, because the original one seems to open up, especially with braided line,” he continued. “We built the whole thing on a lifelike Spro head and connected it to a 3/0 Gamakatsu EWG Double Frog Hook that is hinged to create more hookups and keep them buttoned.” |
He reported that the result has been an improved hookup to land ratio. “I used to land about 70 to 75 percent, but that has improved to nearly 100 with our final version, anglers should really be happy with what they see.”
With all of the business and finishes in tournaments aside, Klein is an angler who remains on a quest to keep learning, and if his learning includes more success, he will deal with it as a cagey veteran. “I can’t ever see myself as a Master of the sport,” Klein said. “I don’t do this for the fame or the fortune; I love my place in it.”
He said that the success of others drives him to improve. “We’ve seen a few guys go on incredible rolls over the years,” Klein said. “But when Kevin [Van Dam] or Skeet [Reese] do what they’ve been doing, I don’t get mad; I get challenged to do better myself.”
“It’s not that often a guy gets to stay on top of this crowd for very long, maybe for a few days,” he concluded like a true veteran. “Even when you do, there’s always next tournament, and when you kick their butts in one event, there’s always the next one, and we all start out even again.”
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