The Bryan Kerchal Story

Bryan Victor Kerchal was many things to many people. I am proud to say to me, he was a friend. Perhaps being close the principals colors my judgement, but I find it difficult to conceive of a more inspiring story...or one of greater tragedy...than his.

Bryan Kerchal loved to fish. In particular, he loved to fish for largemouth bass. Multiply several-fold the fervor of the most ardent bass angler you know, and you might begin to approach Bryan's feelings about bass fishing . He was as consumed by the desire to catch bass and to learn more about catching bass, as anyone I have ever known.

To most young men, the idea of bass fishing as a way to make a living would be little more than a pipe dream. To Bryan, it was a plan. One night during his first semester at Salem State College, he found himself studying Bassmaster Magazine instead of the material for his next day's classes. This was not a particularly unusual occurrence. Bryan spent a lot more time thinking about fishing than he did thinking about most anything else. On this night though, Bryan realized that rather than furthering his education, college was inhibiting it, by limiting the time he could spend studying and preparing for what he really hoped to do with his life. As much as he loved to fish, and as intriguing as he found the idea of making his living fishing tournaments, at this point, Bryan had never fished a tournament of any type, and had no idea of how to get involved.

Not long after that, Bryan came home to Newtown, Connecticut, joined the Housatonic Valley Bassmasters and began his tournament fishing apprenticeship in club tournaments, on local waters. A scant year later, he had qualified as a member of Connecticut's team to the Eastern Regional Championship tournament...a position which could conceivably lead to a berth in The BASS Masters Classic — organized bass fishing's equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Perhaps it's a good thing that Bryan's inexperience prevented him from realizing the breadth of the gap between conceivable and likely.

At that time, there were better than a half-million B.A.S.S. members in the country. Most of them dreamed of qualifying for the Classic. Approximately 30,000 of those members belonged to local B.A.S.S. Chapters and are eligible to reach for the Classic's golden ring by fishing a series of chapter tourneys to qualify for their club's team to the State Federation Championship, from which a handful would move on to the Regional, and then the National Chapter Championships. In the end, only 5 of those Federation level fishermen...one from each geographic region...would qualify for a slot in the Classic, where they would compete against the 35 top full-time professional tournament anglers. In Bryan's case, at each step of the path, he was fishing against anglers with far more tournament experience than he. He would though, never fish against anyone more determined than himself.

You realize, of course that I wouldn't have much of a story to tell here, if Bryan hadn't pulled off the near-impossible, by qualifying from the Eastern Regional Chapter Tournament to the National Chapter Championships, then earning one of those 5 coveted "amateur" berths in the '93 Classic.

Bryan finished last in the '93 Classic. Still, as one of the five "Wrangler Anglers", he'd earned a partial sponsorship to fish the invitational side of the B.A.S.S. pro tour the following season, so he considered it a major stepping stone on his way to that goal. Fame and fortune meant little to Bryan. It was the opportunity to fish that he was after, and he felt as if he'd gotten himself almost all the way there.

The story could have ended here. By all rights, the story should have ended here. But amazingly, this young man with more drive than experience did something truly unprecedented. He fished his way through the same series of eliminations in club, State, Regional and finally the National Chapter Championships the following year, to again take one of those five "amateur" slots in the Classic. This time around, he bettered his previous year's accomplishment. That is an undertatement of mammoth proportions. Bryan won the National Chapter Championship outright, to take home $15,000 in cash, plus another year of sponsorship on the pro trail from Wrangler Outdoor Wear, then the corporate sponsor of the Federation Championship.

By this time, Bryan had already become the subject of murmurs in the world of bass fishing. For a "kid" his age to qualify for the Classic twice...consecutively no less...was an awe inspiring feat for a lot of the 600,000 or so grass roots bass anglers who made up the general membership of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society. With a year on the B.A.S.S. Invitational circuit under his belt, the lanky, well spoken and polite young man had also been noticed on the professional side of the sport. It's not so much fishing prowess that impresses the sponsors after all, as much as it's a presentable and personable appearance and manner and an air of believability coupled with enough fishing savvy to keep those all-important sponsor patches in the limelight. Bryan had those qualities in spades. He was among the most naturally likeable people I have ever met, and was honest and humble almost to a fault. Bryan so enraptured the crowds and the potential sponsors, that it's likely his week at the '94 Classic would have propelled him into the full-time fishing career he sought, regardless of how well or poorly he finished. The point became moot however, when the unthinkable happened. Bryan Kerchal won the 1994 Bass Masters Classic. The $50,000 first place prize certainly moved him into the professional ranks, but it's the sponsorships, endorsement contracts and public appearance demands attendant to a Classic victory that really spell the difference, and which put the estimated potential value of a Classic win in the seven digit range.

It wasn't just his fishing prowess that propelled Bryan into the hearts and the cumulative imagination of the fishing world that week. As a rank & file "bass club guy" going toe-to-toe with the full-time-pros, he immediately became a crowd favorite. The crowd is made up, after all, of bass club members, and Bryan was living their dreams as well as his own. The enthusiasm and the modesty he exhibited in every situation really enraptured the fans. He was so obviously "...just a kid who loves to fish, living his dream" that the cameras and the fans gravitated to him.
I had the great pleasure of being Bryan's official press observer on the 2nd day of the '94 Classic. While he answered every question I asked, his mind never veered far off the task at hand. He had a game plan and he stuck with it. He fished hard all day, and pieced together his second limit of the tourney. And it was a better limit than he'd weighed in on day 1.

I snapped the photo on the right immediately after Bryan caught the fish that pushed his 2nd day total in that Classic from about 11, up beyond 14 pounds...arguably, that's the fish that won the Classic for him. I suppose I could relate the details of Bryan's Classic victory...a fish-by-fish account of his three days of competitive splendor...how he never lost or broke off a bass in the three days...how he was the only competitor to weigh in a limit on each of the 3 competition days, and so many other details. But if you're interested in those details, you've already read them a hundred times on the pages of Bassmaster Magazine, or in many newspaper accounts. As important as all that seemed to those of us in the industry in the hours, days, and weeks following the '94 Classic, it seems so insignificant now, in the light of the way the rest of Bryan's story went.

Bryan had a good luck charm of sorts. A "fish whistle", given to him by a friend, which he had promised to toot every time he caught a fish in the Classic. When he was captured on TV blowing that whistle after boating one of the fish that helped him win, it quickly became his trademark. It seemed like everyone in Greensboro wanted one of those whistles that week. About 4 months later, Bryan asked me to help him investigate the possibility of marketing the whistle. "Lure companies want my name on a lure," he told me, "but the thing that I get asked about the most when I do public appearances, is that fish whistle. Anybody can have a signature model crankbait, but no matter who might copy it, there can only be one Bryan Kerchal Fish Whistle.

"I'm going fishing in Mexico next week," he added, "and then I'm taking a trip with Suzanne. It'll probably be after the first of the year by the time I can get back to it." We left it at that; A project to be undertaken after the Holiday season.

A project we would never get to finish.


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In the months following his '94 Bassmasters Classic victory, I had interviewed Bryan several times for In-Fisherman Radio, and had quite a bit of him on tape. The subject of Bryan had also come up when I interviewed Rick Clunn at the Classic, and I listened again the tapes of both Bryan and Rick in the days following Bryan's death. One of the things that became clear, was that there was some unique connection between these two men. Something that went beyond just being competitors...even beyond Bryan's open admiration for Clunn.

They shared the same dream. More so, they shared the need to live their dream instead of just dreaming it.

I picked up the phone and called Rick Clunn. We talked then, and again at Bryan's funeral. Those conversations, coupled with the tapes of Bryan and the tapes of Rick, resulted in this previously unpublished essay on the connection between two champions...

It's more nearly 25 years years since his passing, and I still think of Bryan often. I still get choked up about it pretty often, too. I've decided that the only rational explanation for Bryan's incredible success...fulfilling his life's dreams and ambitions against such strong odds, and in such a short period of time...is that there truly is a God, and that God knows when our ticket is due to be up, and who made sure that Bryan had the opportunity to achieve the things he really wanted in life before his time on earth came to an end. And I suspect that Bryan was here to teach us something...
Don't hesitate to live your most passionate dreams, because there's no guarantee you'll ever get a better chance to do so.