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By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

BRIDGETON – The temperature on the car dash said it was 30 degrees outside; the wind made it feel more like 18. There was a fresh coating of snow covering the remnants of what fell on the area earlier in the week. The people in the room had shed their coats that protected them from the winter chill.

It was the kind of day that makes sports people appreciate more indoor pursuits like basketball and wrestling, but on this day the man standing in front of the room was talking about, of all things, fishing.

Not the kind where you pull out the lawn chair, throw out a line and suck back a couple cold ones while waiting for a tug on the other end. We’re talking about the highly competitive, big bass boat world of professional angling.

As anyone who knows him will tell you, any day is a good day for Mike Iaconelli to talk about the sport that has become his lifelong passion and, on this day, the newest member of the All-Sports Museum of Southern New Jersey Hall of Fame.

“I love talking shop and engaging with people about the sport,” Iaconelli said after addressing what a museum official described as one of the largest crowds for their induction ceremony. “I’m very passionate about it. It’s been my profession for 30 years. It’s what I love. It’s the most natural thing I’ve done in my life. It just feels right that it’s what I love to do. It’s been a lot of work, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re really into it.”

And he’s been really good at it, becoming an unlikely fan favorite in a sport where people embrace their sports heroes but haven’t always been welcoming to folks from his side of the lake.

Winning and an engaging personality helps a lot. He has won dozens of tournaments and series titles and is the only angler to ever win the Bassmaster Classic, Bassmaster Angler of the Year and BASS Federation Nation Championship. Those are just the highlights.

With his induction last weekend he is the first fisherman to be enshrined in the Hall that recognizes the accomplishments of sports luminaries with ties to South Jersey. His inclusion brings to 22 the number of sports and related fields now represented in the museum.

Museum board member Anthony D’Agostino called it “very cool” to add a new sport to the fold and said in Iaconelli’s case “it’s something we probably should have done a long time ago.”

The trailblazing moment wasn’t lost on the newest member of the Hall.

“The fact fishing is now represented in the museum, I am as proud of that as I am of being from South Jersey,” Iaconelli said. “We are kind of a fringe sport. To be a part of getting that in the museum is a good feeling.

“A lot of people never really recognized it as a sport, especially in this part of the world. To be a part of bringing that awareness … I’m proud of that. If you combine it with the fact that I’m very, very proud I grew up here, still live here, it makes it even more special.”

Iaconelli grew up in Runnemead, went to Triton Regional High School and now lives on Palatine Lake in Pittsgrove. He had not been to the museum prior to learning of his induction into the Hall, but like everyone who tours the facility for the first time was “blown away” by the scope and volume of the items on display. The museum houses more than 15,000 items with some connection to the South Jersey sports scene.

While he was impressed by the likes of Willie Mays’ National League Gold Glove, Pete Rose baseball bats and all the famous players there, he was especially drawn to the local stories of which he was unaware, like those of Bernice Gera, the first female professional umpire, and John Borican, Bridgeton’s world-class runner whose Olympic dream was preempted by World War II.

“It’s one of those things that’s kind of hiding in plain sight,” Iaconelli said of the museum. “I’ve driven past that road thousands times in my life and didn’t know it existed, but we took a visit before the ceremony and it was awesome.

“I’m a bit of a history buff and also, of course, into the Philadelphia sports scene, so it was cool to see some of the history, the memorabilia and all that stuff. It was cool. It was eye opening.”

Traditionally, Hall of Fame inductees donate items from their personal collection to the museum to display in his exhibit. Iaconelli provided a treasure trove of memorabilia exceeding the cache he provided to the BASS Fishing Hall of Fame upon his induction there in 2023. “It was for sure more,” he said.

Among the items he was especially proud to donate included a jersey he wore during the season he won Angler of the Year (2006), a letterman-style jacket he was awarded that same year as an homage to his local roots with the Top Rod Bassmasters fishing club, and what he called “the smallest but probably the most important” piece of memorabilia, a custom Delta Special lure that helped him win the 2003 Bassmasters Classic in New Orleans “that kind of made my career.”

“I come from a family of people who don’t throw things away,” he said. “I wouldn’t call them horders, that might be the wrong word, but they like to keep stuff. I had this amazing selection of stuff that my mom had kept, my uncle had kept, and a couple things we had at the house and put it together. It was cool. I was so happy to have that donated to the museum.””

You might call Iaconelli an outlier in his sport, certainly atypical both when he started and when he went pro.

He played all the traditional stick-and-ball sports growing up and ice hockey was his favorite because, as a guy who never likes to sit still, he liked the pace of play. But as he got older whenever he got the chance he’d slip away to some nearby lake for a little quiet time with a rod and reel and the sounds of nature. And when you have success the pull gets stronger and the hook was set.

He started fishing competitively in 1993 and the next year he won a tournament on Lake Norman outside Charlotte that set him up with a $40,000 bass boat package and he was on his way. He was just a sophomore at Rowan.

“That was the win for me,” he said. “There was a level of confidence that win gave me, but the boat was the big one. I had access to get to the next level.”

Every step of the journey he was an outsider. In his suburban Philly schools he was one of five “outcasts” who enjoyed fishing but their passion became their lifelong bond. The four buddies – three childhood friends and one they met in high school – were all on hand at the induction.

“In middle school and high school, a couple hundred kids in our grade, very, very few fished,” Iaconelli said. “But somehow the four other guys who fished, we all found each other. It was the absolute best thing from a standpoint of friendship – these guys are still my friends 40 years later – but it also helped me elevate my level of fishing. We were helping each other and you would push each other.

“It’s almost like Little League, but we didn’t have a Little League at fishing, but we would push each other, we would elevate each other, we would help each other learn. In those years, sixth grade to my early 20s, those years of the camaraderie between us was unbelievable. As much as we were outcasts and strange and odd to a lot of people, we loved it and it was our passion. Take that away, I don’t think I get to the next level if that wasn’t there.”

It took a while to find that kind of camaraderie when he went out on tour. Not only was he young, he was a danged yankee invading the domain of Southern, country men who knew SEC stood for the Southeastern Conference and not the Securities & Exchange Commission. The only thing South about Iaconelli was South Jersey.

“You’re definitely a bit of an outcast in a sport that was dominated by Southern guys,” he said. “That feeling wasn’t a mystical thing; it was real. I can remember being shunned and guys turning a shoulder. That was there.

“The other thing early on, too, is I was just always a bit different from the norm and it’s natural to be afraid or wary of change. Maybe at the beginning a lot of people didn’t know what to think, it was a different thing, but time does heal all that. After you’re doing it for a while and kind of, like, prove yourself and they realize you love what you’re doing and you have some success, then those things change.

“I would say there were four or five years there where you have to battle through that and then you make a decision personally. You’ve got to keep going because you love it, you’ve got to deal with it and combat it or you run. I kept going. I loved it.”

And now he’s one of the most popular anglers on the tour. In addition to competing at the top level of his sport, he is driven to grow the sport with his entertainment, education and charitable interests. He has a popular podcast and hosts several television shows.

In about a month he’ll be off to start his 30th year as a professional angler. Internally, his team will be doing some limited edition merchandising and promotions related to the milestone year, beginning with the Ike Foundation College Scholarship Dinner Jan. 31 at The Grove in Centerton. And BASSMasters plan to have a film crew follow him throughout the season to document the year on its various digital platforms.

Yes, digital platforms. Iaconelli is really blown away how the sport has gone mainstream and he’s been proud to be a part of that growth.

“I remember when I was aspiring thinking if I could just make a living fishing tournaments this would be great,” he said. “Every day I come home I’m blown away about how big it’s gotten. And I’m proud of that because I feel like I was part of the growth.

“I was lucky that I was in the sport where I feel like was the golden era of growth, the late 90s to 2010-11. It was a tremendous point of growth for our sport because we had a lot of corporate money coming in, we had a lot of exposure, I was getting invited to late-night talk shows, GQ, ESPN the Magazine. It was like what the hell is going on here but I was involved in that.

“Now you look back and see how many people form the North, the West Coast, different ages, different backgrounds (getting involved); it’s really cool to see how big it’s getting. I do a lot of seminars and you’re at a show and you have a kid in his 20s come up and say ‘thank you, you inspired me, I was watching your stuff when I was 8 years old.’ It makes you feel old, but it makes you feel proud because you helped sort of get to a new place.”

And with each new place he visits it brings a whole new audience to talk fishing with.

The Hall’s next induction ceremony is February 15 when it will welcome former major-league pitcher and current Phillies broadcast analyst Ricky Bottalico into its ranks.

The All Sports Museum of Southern New Jersey is pleased to partner with Tix4good to present an opportunity to win tickets to the Eagles vs. Cowboys game on 12/29/24. If you use our dedicated link, a very generous portion of each entry goes directly to the museum and enables us to continue our mission to celebrate and commemorate our rich sports landscape.

Additionally, we are offering chances to win tickets to the Q102 Jingle Ball, and even The Big Game! Please use the links below to enter-

ESPN National Correspondent and UNICO National Spokesman, Sal Paolantonio, to be inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame at the NIASHF 45th Annual Gala on November 15, 2024.
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Congratulations, Sal on this huge milestone!

Michael Cudemo and Andre Buck will be inducted into the All Sports Museum and Hall of Fame of Southern New Jersey on Saturday, 11am., September 21, 2024. The ceremony will be held at the Museum located at 8 Richie Kates, Sr. Way and Babe Ruth Drive, Bridgeton, NJ.

The induction ceremony is open to the public.