This past week the FLW Tour held its second event of the year (now with Bass Pro Tour competitors in the mix) on Lewis Smith Lake in Alabama. Just a few hours down the road, the National Professional Fishing League held their inaugural event on Eufaula. Head further south, and on Saturday you’d find the competitors in the first Bass Pro Shops US Open tournament on Okeechobee. Pretty much the only people who own bass boats and can scrape together an entry fee who weren’t fishing a big dollar derby this past week were the Elite Series pros, all of whom are headed to Pickwick now. Backtrack up from Okeechobee back through Alabama and you’ll find them claiming their piece of the pie.
I get it. The anglers want to be out there competing while the fish are big and dumb and moving shallow. The tournament circuits revel in the idea of massive bags. And especially after a year of COVID-induced restrictions, everyone wants to get rid of the “new normal” and just go back to regular-old-normal.
It’s a great time to be a fan of the sport – you can follow whichever format and whichever anglers float your boat – but I also wonder if it’s too much of a good thing. Are the tours and their sponsors, particularly the ones trying to gain a foothold, splitting the baby by going head to head? Would they be better off to spread things out and be the only show in town at a “lesser” time. Of course, the examples I can recall (like the USFL, which initially offered spring football instead of going head-to-head against the NFL and the NCAA) eventually failed, but I don’t know if that was the result of their scheduling as much as various other factors.
If all goes according to plan, the Elite Series will be over in July. The FLW Tour will end in August and the BPT will conclude in September. NPFL stretches out a little further, but the landscape becomes considerably less crowded in the latter half of the year. Could an August-to-January or July-to-December tour succeed? Yes, you’d lose some anglers to hunting and family time, but I expect it would be relatively few. Put up the money and it doesn’t matter when you hold the tournament, or where it occurs. Schedule it and they will come – and you could have the calendar all to yourself.
