Hookin’ Bass

J.T. Kenney has been part of pro fishing circuit since 2002

Michael A. Sawyers

CUMBERLAND — J.T. Kenney still loves the professional bass fishing world in which he has been living and working since 2002, if you can call it work, that is.

It’s not like he wakes up one day and thinks he’d rather have an office job than have to tow his boat through a few states to get to a lake where he will have a chance to win a big check for catching bass.

“Oh yeah, I still love it,” Kenney said Monday via phone from his new home in Palm Bay, Fla. “Having a mortgage payment is great. I had always been renting before.”

Actually, to save money, Kenney had slept in his truck early on in his career.

And why not love it? During 2008, Kenney earned $207,000 for sticking hooks in the lips of fish, something he used to do for free anyway just because of the joy it brought.

“Not bad for a Frostburg country kid. I’ll take it,” Kenney proclaimed, exalting in his success and keeping in touch with his roots all at the same time.

Kenney earned more than half of his 2008 income in the very first event of the year, a January tournament on Lake Okeechobee in Florida that put $125,000 in his bank account. It was Lake ‘O’ that rocketed Kenney into the professional fishing spotlight with a first place early in his career.

“The only thing that can get a little tiresome is the driving,” Kenney said. “I tow a boat 50,000 miles a year.”

That task, however, just got easier and less expensive.

“Chevrolet, one of my sponsors, just dropped a new Suburban off in my driveway, so that’s not too bad,” he said.

Besides the Chevrolet sponsorship, Kenney’s main sponsor is BP Petroleum.

“The win in January was a great momentum builder,” Kenney said. “From then on I was pretty steady, finishing 20th to 30th in a lot of tournaments, though I got a fifth place at Lake Erie.”

Kenney’s recent big win at Lake Okeechobee was 10 years in the making.

“Before I became a professional fisherman I used to come down to Florida when the water got too hard (iced over) to fish at Deep Creek Lake and the Potomac River,” he recalled. “There was a spot in the middle of the lake here that locals wouldn’t go during drought conditions, because it was too dangerous for damaging your boat. But I didn’t know that.”

Kenney said he went out onto a flat and found a depression in the lake bottom that actually had become an isolated well for holding fish.

Fast forward to January 2008 and the associated drought that hit the southeastern U.S.

“I had always told myself that if I ever fished there during a drought that that’s where I’d go. It took 10 years, but it paid off big.”

Kenney fishes in both the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, in which he finished 13th out of 200 anglers for the year, and the Wal-Mart FLW Series, in which he finished ninth — notably high status among those who flip baits, plugs and all sorts of plastic creatures for a living.

Detailed information about the professional tour and Kenney is available at www.flwoutdoors.com.

“I’ll fish in a new three-tournament series this year put on by the Professional Anglers Association, but I’ll still fish the tour and the series,” he said.

During 2008, the pro fishing circuit took Kenney to waters in states such as Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Michigan.

The kid from Frostburg will be getting up in this neck of the woods some during 2009. Kenney will fish in a Bassmaster tournament in April on the upper Chesapeake Bay. Then in August, Kenney will be in Pittsburgh where he is prequalified to fish in the Forrest Wood Cup, an event on the Three Rivers where the winner floats away with a million dollars.

“I think people at home would enjoy driving up to that,” Kenney said. “There is a giant outdoor and boat show associated with it.”

Kenney isn’t ready to rest just because of a successful 2008 campaign. “The thing about this business is that you have to keep catching fish,” he said.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.