This Alabama pro made a promise to himself after graduation from college in 1992 that he'd someday make his living by bass fishing. He stuck with his program and chalked up 15 top-10 finishes in the BFL and the EverStart Series, as well as five out-and-out BFL wins over the next 10 years. By 2002, he'd earned a third-place finish and $10,000 at the All-American.
He accomplished all this while, for the better part of eight years, competing as a non-boater. He remained a non-boater until the introduction of the boater/co-angler format in 2000, when he jumped into the boater division. His boat at the time was a 17-foot aluminum BassTracker, rigged with a 50-horse outboard. He won the Super Tournament at the end of that year in the Bama Division and won the first tournament of the next year in the Bulldog Division. He fished nine tournaments that year in two different divisions and won two Super Tournaments back-to-back in 2001 out of the Tracker.
Said Kennedy, "The Tracker certainly never rumbled at takeoffs or impressed anyone with its blistering top-end speed, but its sneaky disposition kept me in uninterrupted contact with the fish... . I won $25,000 or $30,000 in two years fishing out of my little boat, so I had absolutely no qualms with fishing anywhere against anybody in it."
In 2001, while working full-time as a mechanical engineer, Kennedy decided to become a full-time pro angler. Wanting to move up to the FLW Tour, he knew he needed a bigger boat, so he went out and bought a used 354 Ranger for $1,500. However, the boat didn't have a motor on it, the livewells didn't work, and it had no carpeting at all. Accordingly, he kept using the Tracker in 2002, fishing four FLW Tour events and pocketing more than $6,000, including a third-place finish at Santee Cooper.
While the Tracker fit Kennedy like a glove, and he had all the confidence in the world in his abilities to perform within its comfy confines, the same couldn't always be said for his co-angler partners. Of all the guys who fished out of the Tracker with him, though, only one had any issues with it, he said.
"When I told him at the pairing meeting that we'd be in a Tracker, he was like, 'What?' He thought I was kidding... . Everyone else didn't seem to mind, or at least they didn't say anything."
Heading into the fifth event of 2002, Kennedy knew he would have to get the Ranger up and running for the big water at Lake Champlain. He put a 90-horse motor on the back for that event and finished the season with it. At the first stop in 2003, however, things took a turn for the worse. He burned up the 90-horse in the grass at Okeechobee. His dad then gave him a state-of-the-art 150, and after installing new carpeting from stem to stern and getting the boat's electronics and livewell systems to working, he was back in business.
Later in 2003, Kennedy landed a team deal, and he won his first FLW event. The rest, as they say, is history. The promise he had made himself back in 1992 after graduation from college had come true.
Modified from a story by Brent Conway.
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