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Jersey boy hooks the big one
By Mike Shute ’93
 ike Iaconelli made sports history with his “Superbowl size win” of
the Bassmaster Classic. Maybe walking on water would have made a bigger
impression on the bayou, but Iaconelli’s win netted him a prestigious
prize most pros only dream of.
At age 12, Mike Iaconelli ’96 dreamed of becoming a bass fishing
champion. This past summer, he realized that dream and now he’s
trying to revolutionize an entire sport. If recent history is any indication
of future performance, he’s on his way to accomplishing that
goal, too.
The 31-year-old Iaconelli broke new ground by becoming the first professional
angler from the northeast United States to capture competitive fishing’s
biggest championship when he won the 33rd CITGO Bassmaster Classic
presented by Busch Beer in the Louisiana Delta in New Orleans. The
only competitor from New Jersey, he came in first place in the 61-person
field during the three-day event.
“Winning the Classic means a lot,” said Iaconelli, who
earned a $200,000 prize for his championship and has collected nearly
$600,000 in career winnings since becoming a full-fledged pro in 1999. “It’s
been a dream of mine and to do it was awesome. It’s the Super
Bowl of bass fishing. It’s a life-altering experience and it
has opened a lot of doors for me to things I never thought I’d
be able to do.”
While most bass fishers use sophisticated boats powered by outboard
motors, Mike got his competitive start fishing out of a 12-foot plastic
boat that he modified for bass fishing, including adding an electric
motor. Growing up in Runnemede, he did most of his fishing in lakes
in and around the Delaware Valley. Now fishing takes him worldwide,
including trips to Spain and Venezuela. In October, he appeared on
ESPN’s New American Sportsman hosted by former football and baseball
star Deion Sanders.
“I’ve been fishing for as long as I can remember,” Iaconelli
said. “My mom has pictures of me holding up fish that I caught
from when I was 3 or 4 years old that I don’t even remember.
My family was always very into the outdoors and we would go on vacations
two or three times every year to the Poconos and go camping and fishing.
But a childhood pasttime soon became more for Iaconelli. “In
my early teens, one of my friends had a Bassmaster Magazine and reading
through that really got me excited about the sport,” he recalls. “It
was just a hobby until 1991 when I first competed and then it was not
until I enrolled at Rowan that I realized that this was something I
could do for a living.”
For three years he fished as a semi-pro angler, the highest level at
which he could participate while still remaining an amateur. But professional
ranking beckoned and he had to travel more and fish more to attempt
making a living as a sport fisherman.
So far, he’s been doing it very well. By winning the Bassmaster
Classic, Iaconelli is now the only angler in Bass Anglers Sportsmen’s
Society (B.A.S.S.) history to win a Federation Divisional tournament,
the Federation Championship, the amateur side and pro sides of a Bassmaster
Tour event, and the Bassmaster Classic. The only mountain left for
him to conquer is a victory on the CITGO Bassmaster Open Trail which
is an 18-event tour with stops all over the United States.
But Iaconelli is not just interested in championships. He’s also
got his eye toward making his sport—which is now viewed as a
bit obscure and primarily geared toward fans in the southeast U.S.—into
an exciting, captivating, mainstream endeavor. An exuberant and unorthodox
angler, he seems born to change the image of the sport—and has
already ruffled the feathers of some veterans in his game.
“I’m very different from your typical fisherman,” Iaconelli
says. “I’m younger than most of my peers, I’m from
the north and I talk fast. It’s me, it’s my personality—and
in the fishing world, that creates a little conflict. It’s a
change and people are hesitant to change.”
According to Rowan alum Takashi Abiko ’96, ’98, an avid
fisherman and fan of his former classmate, “Iaconelli is great
for the sport because he’s very animated, screams and yells when
he catches a big bass. He’s breaking down the stereotype of fishing,
that it’s no longer just a slow, country boy pastime.”
Style and drive go a long way, but Iaconelli says his education is
also helping him market himself to a new audience and take his sport
to a new level. At mikeiaconelli.com, he offers the lure he designed,
the stone jig, as well as an instructional CD and articles in which
he writes about fishing technique, equipment, philosophy and even sunglasses.
“My education at Rowan was great because everything I learned
there, I use 100 percent now—things about business, about marketing
and about promoting myself,” said Iaconelli, who was pursuing
his master’s degree at Rowan in 1997 before putting that on hold
to chase his dream. “The one big advantage I have is that not
a lot of fishermen at this level have a college degree or the background
I have. I can use it as a tool and it’s pretty important to me.”
The BASS tour is much like the PGA or NASCAR in that each competitor
must secure sponsorships to help cover their expenses to compete and,
in turn, often make appearances at sponsors’ requests. Already
sponsored by Dick’s Sporting Goods, Yamaha and others, Iaconelli
has hired a sports agent and a publicist and is looking to target media
sources that don’t normally cover his sport in an effort to bring
competitive fishing to the mainstream. Abiko believes Iaconelli is
the right man for a sea change: “Pro bass fishing is fast, furious,
highly competitive and big money and even a Jersey boy can be at the
top of the sport.”
Iaconelli knows his championship has earned him credibility maybe as
significant as his winnings and status. “I have solidified my
foundation in this business and now I have a platform I didn’t
have before. By hopefully acquiring new and more powerful sponsorships,
I want to expose the sport I love to people that normally don’t
really see it,” he says. “Maybe there’s a kid in
Philly or New York City or somewhere in the northeast that might like
fishing and I want to show them that they can do it too.” 
_________________
Michael Shute ’93 is a copywriter at Fleer
Trading Cards in Mt. Laurel. The Gloucester Township resident also
writes freelance and works as a statistician for live sports broadcasts
on CN8.
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