Inductees By Year Class

William G. “Bill” Dance  It would be difficult to argue Bill Dance is the most recognized bass angler of all time. Even folks who have never made a cast recognize the friendly face under his iconic white and orange Tennessee Volunteer baseball cap -- thanks to more...

Homer Circle (1915—2012) has fished over much of four continents and written about the world’s great sport fish. However, it has been his devotion to the bass that brings him to the Hall of Fame. He began his journalistic career, when he worked as the Public Relations...

Ray Scott (1933-2022 ) — Ray Scott’s All-American Bass Tournament in June 1967 on Beaver Lake, Arkansas, is remembered as the seminal event in modern bass fishing, even though it wasn’t the first bass tournament in history. However, his subsequent tournaments — the...

While he cut his fishing teeth in the state of Missouri as a youngster, Johnny Morris has proven that he can catch ’em anywhere he goes, around the world. During a very distinguished professional bass tournament career, he proved that he could “cast” with the best of...

He began his fishing career, it seems, while still in diapers. After all, we’ve been watching him on television for over twenty-five years. To get a TV. show of his own, he had to be able to catch a bass. And, catch ’em he can. Jimmy Houston won his first professional...

Known affectionately as “pawpaw” (he is a grandfather), it was his mild demeanor and years of giving fatherly advice to tournament fishermen across America that gained him this name with hundreds of tournament pros. Guido Hibdon, while having fished all of his life,...

Cotton Cordell (1928—2015) When Cotton Cordell was just a kid, his father owned a boat landing on Lake Catherine, in Hot Springs, where he cut his teeth on fishing, guiding, and lure designing. After World War II, he discovered that, by purchasing survival kits that...

Bob Cobb — While Ray Scott gets much-deserved credit as the father of modern bass fishing, the keenest observers of those early years of Scott’s B.A.S.S. organization agree that the movement probably would not have survived without the relentless efforts and creative...

DENNY BRAUER (1949—) – Nebraska native Denny Brauer left a career as a brick mason to uproot his family to Missouri to chase his dream of becoming a professional angler, and went on to become the most notable flipper and pitcher in bass fishing history. Building on...

Hank Parker — After many successful years guiding and fishing tournaments around the Carolinas, Hank Parker launched his professional tournament fishing career in 1976, when he began fishing the National Bass Association Tournament Circuit, winning that tour’s...

When Tommy Martin first began tournament fishing in 1968, little could he have known that it would lead him into a thirty-five year career. A career that has seen him go from guiding on Lake Sam Rayburn, Texas, in the late 60’s, to guiding on Lake Livingston, Texas,...

It’s one thing to win bass tournaments, which Tom Mannhas done, but it’s an entirely different matter to design, produce and manufacture fishing lures for the professionals and weekend anglers to use. When he began his lure manufacturing business, in 1958 with $5.00,...

Don Butler (1930 - 2004)— He’s been called Ray Scott’s “guardian angel” and the “patron saint of bass fishing.” While Don Butler might not have agreed with those descriptions, there’s no doubt Butler came to the rescue at several junctures in the birth and growth of...

Jerry McKinnis (1937 - 2019) Jerry McKinnis comes to us as one of the elite few who will ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame, who did not make his living as a full-time tournament fisherman. Instead, he made it through almost forty years of providing outstanding...

Billy Westmorland (1937 - 2002) — No angler is more synonymous with smallmouth bass fishing than Billy Westmorland. Born in Clay County, Tennessee, in 1937, Westmorland grew up a short cast from Dale Hollow Reservoir, a deep, clear TVA impoundment straddling the...

Harold Sharp (1927 - 2015) — A career in the railway industry teaches a person the importance order, organization, punctuality and consistency. After 26 years of living and working by those watchwords, Harold Sharp was perfectly prepared to become the first full-time...

George Cochran (1950—) When George Cochran began his fishing career as a child in Arkansas, he did it in a very quiet and unassuming fashion. His father wasn’t a fan of fishing He maintained that demeanor which ultimately earned him the moniker of “Gentleman George”...

He was born and raised outside of Charleston, South Carolina, on his family’s farm. When he was fourteen, he left the farm and began working at his uncle’s marine dealership, where he garnered a love for boats and racing. Earl was so good at maneuvering a boat at high...

While being a bass fisherman all of his life, he began his professional business career in 1966 when he began working for the Bliss Sales Company, selling fishing tackle, hunting equipment and other outdoor recreational products. A fisherman first and foremost, when...

Over the past thirty-five years, Al Lindner has become a world-renowned sport fishing leader. He, and his brother Ron, were cofounders of Lindy Tackle, as well as In-Fisherman, Inc., which included: In-Fisherman Magazine; In-Fisherman Television; radio shows; books;...

When this Ricky Green caught his first bass, in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, he was only six years old and has been hooked on the sport ever since. His first taste of national bass fishing competition occurred when he fished in the “BassMaster All-American” in 1968, where...

Jim Bagley (1923—2004) Jim never won a national bass tournament but, instead, dedicated his life to assuring that anglers all over the world have some of their happiest days on the water by creating some of the best fish catching lures ever made. Born in Safety...

Chris began fishing as a small child on the banks of the Illinois river, in northeastern Oklahoma. In 1961, she met a high school senior, by the name of Jimmy Houston and this chance encounter would forever change her life. In 1968, this couple both fished “the World...

Dee Thomas (1937 - 2022) Dee Thomas is undoubtedly the most celebrated bass angler from the west coast and he stands tall among the legends of the sport. In 1975, Thomas traveled east to test his skill in the big B.A.S.S. Invitationals. He won the event at Bull Shoals...

The late Bill Norman established a name for himself by building an internationally known fishing lure company, Norman Lures company in Greenwood, Arkansas. Many people have created fishing lures that caught fish, but few have also had the ability to hook fishermen...

Stan is one of the pioneers of bass fishing in the western United States. No one in that part of the country has written more about bass fishing. He began writing immediately after returning from almost two years of serving in an infantry rifle company in the jungles...

Basil Bacon (1937—) Basil was the first person to design a “flippin'” button on a baitcasting reel. The “flippin'” button, which is now standard equipment on just about every freshwater baitcasting reel in the world, helped anglers learn the new “flippin” technique...

Virgil, one of nine children, attended grade school in Easton and then moved with his parents to Amsterdam, Mo where he attended high school, graduating in 1931. On December 3, 1933 he was united in marriage to Cleda Irene Thornbrugh and to this union, four children...

Elwood Lake (Buck) Perry – Widely acclaimed as the “father of structure fishing” – his theories changed the way very serious angler approached the underwater world. His theories on structure fishing were based on his direct observations of fish behavior. As a lifelong...

Nick Creme (1910—1984) invented the modern plastic worm in 1949 while living in Ohio. Nick and Cosma Creme cooked up the perfect combination of vinyl, oils and pigments to produce a molded worm that not only looked and felt soft and alive, but also stayed that way...