Best Books About Tournament Bass Fishing
I know some of you read more than just Instagram captions and TikTok subtitles these days. Like books. Or at least something on your Kindle. As a self-described book nerd, I miss the days of sprawling bookstores and their random finds, and while I’m too ADD to sit in one for hours and nurse a cup of coffee, I still loved to visit them and miss them today.
Even if you’re not a hard core reader, you can get a depth of experience out of a book that you cannot derive from an article or blog post (this blog notwithstanding). I’m convinced that a heavy dose of reading throughout my lifetime has contributed not only to professional opportunities, but generally to wider analytical skills. Fortunately, if you love tournament bass fishing, there are some really good books out there about the topic. For now I’ll limit the list to those that have a narrative component about competition and stories from the tours. Some may have a how-to component as well, but that’s not their primary focus. Here’s my initial list (not necessarily in any particular order), each of which should get you through a plane trip or a rainy couple of afternoons on the couch.
Bass Wars by Nick Taylor. Nearly 40 years later, this plucked-from-the-tour story of Rick Clunn, Randy Moseley and several others still reads like a page-turning novel. I’d recommend it even to non-anglers.
Bass Madness by Ken Schultz. Schultz is one of the leading outdoor writers of our era, and despite not being thought of as a true “insider” in bass world, he put together a compelling account of the Bassmaster Classic, two decades after Taylor’s book. For some reason it didn’t gain the traction among true bass-heads that Taylor’s got, but it’s still a fun read.
Diary of a Bass Pro by Joe Thomas (With Tim Tucker). This was a tournament blog before the word blog had been invented and showed life on the road in all its glory and despair. I got to interview Thomas about it a few years back. Sadly, Tucker, who I’m sure I would’ve liked and occasionally bickered with, died in a car crash just as I got into writing.
Fishing on the Edge by Mike Iaconelli. This is pretty much a no-holds-barred account of Ike’s rise in the sport, and probably freaked out a bunch of the more staid traditionalists. He changed the sport forever and this is a window into how that happened.
Kevin VanDam’s Bass Strategies by Kevin VanDam with Louie Stout. This one is heavily on the how-to side, so it might run afoul of my earlier limitations, but with a 1995 publication date (six years before he won the first of his four Bassmaster Classic titles), I believe that it shows an early window into what made him tick and why he’s the G.O.A.T. For the sake of completeness, when you’re done with this one you should read the subsequent VanDam/Stout book entitled “Secrets of a Champion,” published after KVD got the Classic Money off his back.
The Fish that Changed America by Steve Price. Where have you gone, Steve Price? I still see him occasionally at events, but he’s faded a bit from the bass scene. If he wanted, he could be the poet laureate of our sport, and this extensive compilation of history and storytelling shows that he may have more firsthand insight into the history than anyone else alive.
Bass Master Shaw Grigsby by Shaw Grigsby. A fun dive into one of the happiest and most gregarious pro’s back stories, interspersed with some of the most useful tips on fishing strategy and how to assess a tournament situation.
There are others, some of them very good, but these are where I’d start. Many of them are still available through Amazon or electronically. For those that are not, you should still also be able to find some on eBay or on used booksellers’ websites. No, I’m not loaning you my copies. I’ve learned the hard way that is a mistake.
