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Legendary fishing boat designer Randy Hopper of Vexus, and longtime bass fishing media man, Craig Lamb of B.A.S.S. will both be inducted in the prestigious Bass Fishing Hall of Fame on September 25th, an honor made even more special by the fact they met 43 years ago when Lamb’s earliest memories of Hopper were formed over cheeseburger lunches at the iconic White Sands diner in Cotter, AR, near Flippin.
“I was the new kid just trying to make myself useful at the boat plant, and I’ll never forget going to lunch with Randy and the guys. Randy would turn over the place mat under his cheeseburger and sketch some idea he had for the next bass boat into an absolute work of art, and carry it back to the plant to his draftsman’s table,” smiled Lamb on a visit to Vexus, while in town for the Bassmaster Open earlier this year on Norfork Lake.
Lamb stopped to tour the state-of-the-art Vexus boat building facility, but spent the first hour in Hopper’s office reminiscing about the four years he spent in Flippin in the mid 1980s. Mostly, they laughed aloud about the many characters they worked with four decades ago, including Forrest L. Wood, his brother Mickey Wood, and former Bassmaster Harry ‘n’ Charlie cartoon series contributor, Cliff Shelby.
“I was so young and naïve, I arrived in Flippin thinking I was gonna settle into a fancy desk, but I couldn’t find the desk,” says Lamb. “That’s because we didn’t give you a desk,” laughed Hopper. “Instead we just tossed you a set of truck keys and told you to deliver two boats to a fast approaching boat dealer show 1,400 miles away in Las Vegas.”
Lamb did just that, took the keys, headed west alone to Vegas, delivered the boats safely, and unknowingly, began a 40-year journey to a Bass Fishing Hall of Fame career. A path that’s included serving as Forrest Wood’s tournament boat caddy, Ray Scott’s ‘ghost writer’ in Bassmaster Magazine, Assistant Tournament Director for B.A.S.S., and a guiding light to the legendary Nashville Network, that was once home to The Bassmasters TV show and Bill Dance Outdoors.
Hopper who still works passionately as a leader for Vexus, touching all facets of the business from innovative hull designs to enhancing retail dealer relationships, is credited with being the brains behind many of the features we now simply take for granted in today’s modern fishing boats.
From aerated livewells to rear fiberglass transoms tough enough to tote today’s heavy outboards, Hopper has had a serious hand in their innovations, including the use of infused composite construction for stronger glass-to-resin ratios, minimal emissions, and repeatable consistency, when building a fiberglass fishing boat.
“Randy’s passion and fascination with boat building is the same in 2025 as it was in 1982,” says Lamb. “What I learned from him is to always be looking for ways to improve on what you’ve already achieved. The goal is to constantly improve by working beside people who feed off your energy. You see it throughout the factory at Vexus. Those folks don’t see anything as impossible, they just find ways to invent their own solutions,” Lamb explains.
Hopper and Lamb — mutual respect, friendship, and a constant passion-driven perseverance to be the best in their respective professions that began over cheeseburgers near Flippin in 1982, and will soon culminate in their induction into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame on the same September evening in Springfield, MO.
To learn more about the Vexus Boats Randy Hopper helps create, please visit https://vexusboats.com/.
