Kevin VanDam

audio updates in

Jul 29, 2007 - 1:04 PM

KVD has checked in from the road following his Memorial performance. Get the updates here.

Day 2, VanDamaged

Jul 28, 2007 - 10:08 AM

“Today,” Kevin VanDam told the weigh-in crowd, “was one of those days when the smallmouth paid me back.”

A twitching smallmouth turned at the wrong angle as VanDam was unhooking the fish, and caught the inside middle knuckle of VanDam’s right pinky finger with one of the treble hooks. Removing such a hook is usually a swift and relatively painless operation, accomplished by looping braid under the hook, pushing down on the hook and yanking it out.

In this case, though, the cameraman helping VanDam pull out the hook didn’t pull hard enough the first time. And instead of the hook popping out, VanDam’s hand was yanked upwards like a marionette’s.

“These fish are wild when you hook them,” VanDam said.

Ultimately, VanDam shrugged off the hooking — he’s had two fish on the same treble hook before, he said. The sharper pain was a series of missed opportunities for him in the northern waters where he was expected to dominate, or at least contend.

Instead, his 22nd-place finish caps a New York swing that also saw him finish 16th at Lake Erie and 27th on Champlain.

Good finishes for most anglers, but nowhere close to what VanDam was expected to accomplish on strong smallmouth fisheries. To boot, Skeet Reese recaptured the Angler of the Year points lead at Champlain and extended it on Erie.

“I didn’t have a great run at it,” he said of the past three tournaments. “Bad luck. I lost a lot of big smallmouth.”