Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Local bass anglers get chance to 'Beat the Elites'
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
Recent columns
Like many plans, this one started innocently enough.
Some Smith Mountain Lake-area tournament bass anglers were lamenting the decision by the Bass Anglers Sportsman's Society to eliminate the co-angler division in its Elite Series events in 2009.
No longer would amateur anglers get the opportunity to fish alongside pros -- albeit from the boat's back seat -- in the organization's top-level tournaments.
Pros are happy with the decision, but plenty of co-anglers are bummed.
Many have said that they'd love to go out on the local lakes when the pros are in town just to see how they fare against the big boys.
Looking ahead to the Elite Series stop at Smith Mountain Lake on April 23-26, Bill Ward and some buddies were taking in the talk.
Ward said he completely understood the BASS decision. But he also kept hearing amateur anglers talk about how they were planning to fish that weekend anyway to see how they'd do.
"We were just thinking, if everybody is going to go out and fish anyway, why not let them fish in a tournament?" said Ward, a resident of Salem who has been fishing local tournaments for about 15 years.
So they decided to set up a tournament at the lake to coincide with the Elite Series.
The tournament will run the same four days as the Elite Series tournament, with a format that matches the big event. The field will be cut to 50 anglers after two days, and pared to a final 12 for the last day.
They're calling the tournament "Beat the Elites."
And they're getting some attention.
Some good. Some not so good.
"Some people have called it a gimmick or a marketing ploy," Ward said. "Some have called it genius."
Some critics have complained that it's bad form to deliberately plan another tournament on top of a pro event, in this case one that Bedford and Franklin county tourism officials looking to show off the lake helped lure to the area with a $40,000 incentive to tournament organizers.
Ward said his tournament's name has contributed to the attention.
"If we hadn't called it Beat the Elites, if it would have just been the Smith Mountain Open or something like that, it wouldn't be getting the publicity," said Ward, who said that he's fielded phone calls from as far away as New Jersey from fishermen asking about the tournament. "But I look at it as just another tournament."
In fact, it's not at all uncommon for local tournament organizers to hold events on their lakes the same weekends the pros are in town.
Smith Mountain Lake isn't a giant body of water, but with more than 20,000 surface acres and roughly 500 miles of shoreline, it's plenty big enough to handle 200 bass boats.
It's natural for weekend anglers to want to see how they compare to the guys on the pro tours.
That's something they don't really get in a co-angler system, which remains in place in most tournament trails.
Even though the amateur is on the same boat as the pro, the pro makes all the decisions on the fishing. Depending on the kind of tactics the pro is using, the co-angler can be at a huge disadvantage. Rarely do co-anglers outperform the pros.
But even from the backseat, a co-angler can affect pro results.
Pro anglers didn't make it to the major leagues by being dumb. If they see that their co-angler is onto something, they will respond.
So an angler who gets paired -- and pairings are random -- with a co-angler who is catching fish can have a decided advantage over an angler whose co-angler is clueless.
On the Elite Series this year the back seat will be occupied by marshals, citizen members of BASS who will pay $100 for the chance to ride with pros as impartial observers. Most marshal slots are already filled, according to BASS.
The entry fee for the Beat the Elites tournament (probassshop.net/events) is $450 for anglers; half that for co-anglers.
Ward said the top prize for anglers will be $12,000 if the tournament draws 100 teams. He said the tournament needs about "40 to 50 teams" to be viable.
"We're already close to that," said Ward, who hasn't announced the tournament's launch site.
An angler whose total-weight tops the Elite Series winner will get a $1,000 bonus.
Is that possible?
With its late April time frame, the tournament will likely fall during a peak of bass spawning activity at the lake. Because hot spawning areas tend to be good year after year, local knowledge won't hurt.
On the other hand, when pros and locals mix in tournaments, such as during Bassmaster Opens, locals rarely win.
