While various towns throughout the Southeast – ranging from Guntersville, Ala., to Clewiston, Fla., to a variety of spots in Texas – could claim the title of big bass capital of the country, when it comes to Bassmaster Fantasy Fishing, the epicenter of the world is in Chester County, Penn.. Last year Mark Ely of Downington took home the grand prize, and this year Jamond Hunt, from nearby Cochranville, claimed top honors, beating over 30,000 other contestants.
For his win, Hunt will receive a fully-rigged Triton 189TrX powered by a Yamaha VF150LA outboard, a $34,965 value.
Hunt’s route to the title was unconventional in a variety of ways.
“I’m 39 now, but at 30 I didn’t even know that pro bass fishing existed,” he said. “I got married at 33 and got into it through my father-in-law. I still have friends who don’t believe that it exists. None of my friends fish.”
Despite having no defined strategy to earn the win, a hallmark of his season was an effort to make picks that were outside the norm. He never picked longtime fan favorites like Kevin VanDam, Mike Iaconelli, Skeet Reese, Aaron Martens or then-reigning Angler of the Year Brandon Palaniuk.
Of the top 17 anglers in the final AOY standings for 2018, he never picked 14 of them. Instead, he employed a “Moneyball”-style strategy in rejecting older pros who might underperform while picking lesser-known or less-popular names who were consistently at the top.
“I went with my gut,” he said. “But I picked guys who I knew could fish. There are certain guys I gravitate to, not necessarily really big names but underdogs and sleepers that creep in and do damage. As the year progressed I started doing more research.”
He typically made his selections as early as possible to avoid the horror of missing the deadline, and early on he found that when he changed them later he’d end up regretting the alterations. “I tried not to change it after that.”
While he might not have picked the obvious names or the biggest stars, when Hunt found an angler he trusted, he let that pro’s momentum guide his picks. After not picking Jacob Wheeler in the first two events, he picked him eight consecutive times thereafter. He picked Bradley Roy five times, Jason Elam four times, and Matt Lee, Alton Jones Sr. and Keith Combs three times apiece. Each of those anglers was chosen in consecutive events at least once.
Hunt didn’t start to focus on the season-long standings until late in the season, and only had his eyes on winning a Bass Pro Shops gift card until he saw his nationwide standing solidify in the double digits. For someone who was used to finishing in the thousands in prior years, it was uncharted territory.
While he increased his time devoted to research, the momentum almost came to a screeching halt in the last full-field event of the year at the St. Lawrence River. His team of Jacob Wheeler, Seth Feider, Alton Jones Sr., Dave Lefebre and Jason Williamson, all of whom had produced for him earlier in the season, combined for only 992 points, his second worst finish of the year (he’d tallied 991 at Grand Lake in the season’s third event).
“That’s when the pressure really was on,” he said. “It was hard to believe that I was possibly going to win.”
He needn’t have worried. He kept riding the Wheeler train, but added prior favorites Bradley Roy, James Elam and Greg Hackney to his roster for Chatuge, while pulling first-timer Randall Tharp into the mix. The result was his best point finish of the year (1333) at the AOY Championship.
He won the title over the national second-place finisher by 165 points, an average margin of over 16 points per event. He checked the points standings each evening during the final tournament, just as he did throughout the season, but he didn’t believe that he’d won the boat “until I got the official email.”
Just as in Fantasy Fishing, Hunt’s ascendance in the sport has been swift and dedicated. As stated above, he’d never fished for bass less than a decade ago when his father-in-law took him to the banks of a local pond for the first time. He rapidly went from underequipped and lacking in knowledge to a full-fledged addict.
“We started renting boats on local reservoirs, and then my father-in-law bought a boat and we started fishing tournaments. We were terrible at first but it was a rush, and I can’t get enough of it.”
Now he’ll have a tournament-ready boat of his own to take on the waters of the Mid-Atlantic and beyond.
For now he will keep his day job as a guidance counselor at Philadelphia’s Preparatory Charter School of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Careers. As far as he knows, none of the students he advises like to fish, or know much about it, but if they’re wise they’ll seek him out for both on-the-water and behind-the-keyboard advice. After all, Chester County and the surrounding areas have a title to defend.
