Kim Bain Becomes the First Woman to Qualify for The Bassmaster Classic 

 Story by Brent Conway - Photos by Matt Pangrac  

Hot Springs, AR – Coming in, the 20 anglers that qualified to fish the WPT Championship knew that it would be a tough bite. With weather changes almost by the hour, predictions of a super-stingy Lake Hamilton proved correct – as did the prediction of who the Toyota Tundra Angler of the Year winner would ultimately be.

After the first tournament of the season, Alabaster, Ala. angler Kim Bain maintained control over the points race, and its ultimate prize – entrance into the 2009 Bassmaster Classic. Bain made history Saturday by claiming the TTAOY honors, and becoming the first female angler to compete in the sport’s biggest event.

And while fishing Saturday to claim the TTAOY prize was essentially rhetorical, given that she all but sealed it up after nailing one of the biggest sacks of the event Friday, Bain chose to fish and make it official. Of course, there was the fact that Friday’s performance also put her in control of the tournament as well.

Bain started the morning with a two-pound advantage over Eagar, Ariz. pro Audrey McQueen. After bringing her final limit of the week to the scales weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces, the lead shrunk only slightly with a final weight of 23 pounds, 8 ounces.

Audrey McQeen, after setting the lake on fire Friday with the week’s heaviest limit, brought in a limit weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces Saturday. As a result, she wasn’t able to close the gap ending the event in second with 21 pounds, 11 ounces over all. 

In third place at the end of the final weigh-in was Debra Petrowski, of Arlington, Tex., with a final combined weight of 16 pounds, 6 ounces. Debra was only able to box four keepers Saturday, leaving her 4 pound 5 ounce bag a little lighter than she’d hoped.

Juanita Robinson, of Midlands, Tex., finished the week in fourth place with a three-day combined weight of 15 pounds, 1 ounce. Robinson came up two fish shy of a full limit, and her final-day weight rested at only 3 pounds, 2 ounces.

Rounding out the top five was Bainbridge, Ga. Angler Pam Martin-Wells, after placing a 7-pound 5-ounce five-bass tournament limit on the scales, which boosted her three-day weight to 14 pounds, 11 ounces.

1st Place: Kim Bain
Standing on the edge of history, one would assume that nerves would be a huge factor. However, as the first female in the history of the sport of professional bass fishing to qualify for the Classic, Kim Bain said that nerves over the pending title weren’t ever a factor. 

“It’s funny because my nerves didn’t really bother me at all until my drive to the lake this morning,” she revealed. “I think that had as much to do with it being the final day of the season as anything because I wanted to go out, as I do every time I fish, and have a really good day on the water.”

Kim is as goal-oriented as they come, and for the week the list started with five keepers. “My goal each day of the week was to go out and catch five keepers,” she said. “I felt like doing that would put me in contention, but I won’t lie to you though…today had a really rough start to it.” 

Kim explained that her first keeper of the day came unbuttoned as it broke through the grass, and she broke her second bite of the morning off on the hook set. “I was feeling a little anxious at that point for sure,” she confessed.

For the first time all week, Kim went without a limit until around noon – and in the back of her mind was the two keepers that didn’t make it into her live well. “Knowing that every bite counts at this lake, and knowing that I’d lost two first thing was certainly frustrating,” she said. 

“I was able to stay with it though and a short while later – down the same bank – I caught a nice keeper that went around three pounds.”

Fishing a Trixie Shark by Reaction Innovations weighted by a Reaction Innovations Screwed-Up Bullet, Bain stayed with her pattern she’d put together in practice. 

“Basically, I spent the week looking for grass around the edges of the lake that had a little depth on them,” she explained. “If they had about three or four feet of water, that was really tasty.”

With the WBT Championship trophy in hand, Bain is focused on February’s Classic on the Red River. When asked if being the only female in the mix, Bain reasoned that her confidence has no bearing on whom she’s fishing with or against. “Those guys are almost my big brothers,” she said. 

“I don’t that I’ll be intimidated because I hang out with so many of them. Now, saying that, I feel like it’s a great honor to be representing the ladies from the WPT. I’ve had a dream since I was a kid to fish the Classic, so this is the realization of a goal for me.” 

$51,000 richer as a result of the win, Kim and husband Andre Moore (professional angler and owner of Reaction Innovations) will, for the next few weeks at least, have projects other than bass fishing to focus on. “Actually, we just bought a new house,” she said. 

“I told Andre before I left that I won, we’d be starting to renovate soon. Guess what honey…I get new carpet!”

2nd Place: Audrey McQueen
Audrey McQueen certainly did everything in her power to add some drama into the what turned into the “Kim Bain Show.” Starting the week with only two keepers to show for her efforts, the Arizona pro was undaunted. 

“This tournament was a learning process for me,” she said. “The first day they were biting really, really well for me but I had problems keeping them on. I made an adjustment and didn’t have any more problems, but the bite slowed down. That first day really cost me.”

McQueen explained that by changing to a more slender-profiled Zoom finesse worm, paired with an 1/8 ounce weight, her catch ratio sky-rocketed – as evidenced by Saturday’s watershed weight. “I never thought that hooking up would be as much as a problem as it was,” she said. 

“I’m glad that I was able to adjust, but I would like to be able to go back and have Thursday over. I had a lot of ground to make up after the first day.”

From that point until the final cast on Saturday, McQueen explained that her primary pattern was unflappable. “I stayed with what I knew was working pretty much all week,” she explained. “There was a lot of chatter about the water dropping, but I didn’t let it get in my head. I knew that they were still there.”

In the end, McQueen explained that she did her best and was able to treat the week as a learning process – one that she wouldn’t trade for the world. “It was a fantastic week,” she said. “I’m disappointed that I didn’t win, but I’m glad to have been fishing with a shot at winning on the last day.”

3rd Place: Debra Petrowski
The problem with fishing is that you’re constantly at odds with Mother Nature. Such was the case on the final day of the WBT Championship when fog delayed blast off by an hour. Debra Petrowski revealed that the delay pretty much signaled a long day for her. 

“The fog delay really messed up my top water bite,” she said. “I’ve based each day on that top water bite, so it definitely put me in search mode.”

With nothing working on top, Debra scrambled to her back-up water. “I threw the top water for about an hour this morning and never got a bite, so I went to my secondary spot and was able to catch a few fish,” she said. “I then went to my third spot, which is a deep bluff wall, and realized that they were already starting to drop water.”

After the top water bite would fade, Debra explained that she would move out into deeper water fishing deeper rock with either medium- and deep-diving crankbaits, or a soft-plastic crawfish rigged on a 1-ought hook and a split-shot weight. “The key for me was to stay in deeper water,” she said. 

“I stayed around 11-foot deep around the bluff walls that I would parallel because the fish were holding close to rock that dropped off into deeper water.” 

FINAL STANDINGS