Trip Weldon

Trip Weldon — Trip Weldon — In the 50-plus-year history of B.A.S.S., there have only been three tournament directors: Harold Sharp, Dewey Kendrick and Henry Howard Weldon III — better known throughout the sport of bass fishing as “Trip.” Weldon retired at age 65 in February 2021, capping almost 20 years as B.A.S.S. tournament director and 31 years as a Tournament Department employee.

Weldon earned a widespread reputation as a fair but firm tournament director whose two main priorities were maintaining the integrity of the sport and ensuring the safety of anglers. Both goals required him to make extremely tough calls, but even professional anglers whose careers were affected by his decisions to disqualify catches or cancel competition days expressed respect for Weldon’s decision-making.

His three decades in the B.A.S.S. Tournament Department witnessed monumental changes in the sport, including the advent of the pro-am tournament format (a game-changer he credits to Kendrick, his predecessor), the first female anglers to qualify for the Classic, and the success of competitions among youth, high school and college anglers.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is how good the young anglers have become,” he said. “I credit this to improvements in technology, obviously, but also to the development of Bassmaster High School and College series.” Importantly, those programs are under the leadership of Weldon’s son Hank, who was himself a collegiate angler on the University of Alabama team.

Trip Weldon was the main impetus behind the creation of the Bassmaster Elite Series in 2006. Like golf’s PGA, the Elite Series was the first major tour requiring competitors to qualify into it and to continue to perform in order to maintain their Elite status. What’s more, Elite Series pros no longer had to share a boat with another angler, enabling them to prove their own abilities to find and catch bass without any help or hindrance from a co-angler.

Even before going to work for B.A.S.S., Weldon was a bass-fishing junkie, serving as a volunteer camera-boat driver during the 1981 Bassmaster Classic in Montgomery, Alabama, and other tournaments near his home in Alabama. Like most Bass Fishing Hall of Fame members, he is grateful for being able to spend so many years in his dream job. However, his childhood goal wasn’t to weigh fish, but to catch them.

“At first, I guess I wanted to be a professional angler,” he recalls. “I grew up just two blocks from the original B.A.S.S. headquarters in Montgomery, so I was always drawn to the organization.” In a short career on the tournament trails, Weldon won an Everstart event on Lake Martin, Alabama, and placed second in a B.A.S.S. event on that lake. He also won three BFL tournaments and a Red Man Regional on Kentucky Lake, and he had two Top 5 finishes in the Red Man All-American tournaments at Lake Havasu, Arizona, and the Arkansas River, Arkansas.

To finance his tournament career, Weldon first went to work as an “agent operator” for the CSX rail company. That’s the same job Sharp left to become the first tournament director at B.A.S.S. Not coincidentally, both men demonstrated a knack for ensuring that tournament operations ran smoothly and on time.

After a brief stint selling bass boats, Weldon went to work for B.A.S.S. in July 1991, beginning with the Bassmaster Classic on the Chesapeake Bay out of Baltimore. “That was KVD’s first Classic,” Weldon noted.

During a little more than 10 years as assistant tournament director, Weldon earned the respect and confidence of the tournament pros. At his first meeting with the anglers after being named tournament director in 2002, the pros gave him a standing ovation.