Tuesday, March 17, 2009
SML fans show support in Web poll
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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While coaches of some NCAA basketball bubble teams were campaigning this weekend for spots in the big tournament, some Virginia bass fishing fans were on a tournament lobbying mission of their own.
The effort stemmed from a poll on the Bassmaster Internet site.
The poll asked fishermen which of five lakes on this year's Bassmaster Elite Series they would most like to fish.
Smith Mountain Lake, which hosts the Elites April 23-26, was one of the choices on the list, which also included Lake Amistad in Texas and Oneida Lake in New York.
Shortly after the poll went up toward the end of last week, Scott Martin checked it out. He wasn't happy, and said as much in a mass e-mail.
"We're getting killed in the voting now!!" exclaimed Martin, who as the director of commerce and leisure for Franklin County played a key roll in bringing the Elite Series to Smith Mountain Lake in 2007, in late April and again in 2010.
You've got to hand it to Martin: The campaign went viral.
I got at least two other e-mails urging me to support Smith Mountain Lake in the poll. One even included a line about how BASS, the ESPN-owned entity that puts on the tournaments, would consider the poll results when choosing future tournament sites.
That's a compelling reason to support your home lake.
If it were true.
Web site polls are hardly scientific. Simply, they are intended to drive traffic to sites by engaging potential viewers.
And that's fine. Polls can be fun. I vote in them often.
And I voted in this one.
For Lake Amistad.
The BASS pros were there last weekend for the first event on this year's Elite Series.
Weather conditions were challenging and the fishing generally wasn't as good as it has been in recent years.
Still, winner Jason Williamson of South Carolina managed to boat 96 pounds, 6 ounces of bass over four days.
On the final day, he had a 34 pound, 12 ounce bag, meaning his five fish averaged just a hair under 7 pounds.
Those 7 pounders were relative midgets compared to the 12-pound, 13-ounce fish Mike Iaconelli brought to the scales on opening day.
That's the biggest bass Ike's ever caught in competition, and he said he was so freaked out that he yakked after boating the beast.
Iaconelli has caught a bigger bass. His personal record, caught while practicing for a tournament, weighed 14 pounds, 1 ounce.
Guess where he caught it?
So what sane bass fisherman wouldn't want to fish Lake Amistad if given the opportunity?
Not that there's anything wrong with Smith Mountain Lake.
It's beautiful. And the fishing is pretty good in its own right, with a 60- to 70-pound winning bag not out of the question during April's tournament.
As a home lake, I'll take Smith Mountain over Amistad any day. I mean, who wants to actually live in South Texas?
Still, it's understandable that people would want to vote for their home water out of pride. And many Smith Mountain Lake fans did.
When Martin started his campaign, Smith Mountain Lake had a feeble 2 percent of the vote and wasn't even carrying Virginia.
Thanks to massive voter turnout in Virginia and a surprisingly strong showing in Idaho -- where, coincidentally, Martin worked prior to taking the job in Franklin County -- Smith Mountain Lake captured an impressive 34 percent of the vote, about 10 percentage points behind Amistad.
While the poll won't mean squat when BASS starts looking at host lakes for future events, one thing that does make a difference will be fan turnout for the actual tournament.
Great crowds at the June 2007 Elite Series event at Smith Mountain Lake certainly helped the lake land these next two events.
Fishing fans who'd like to see the pros keep coming back should make an effort to get out to the lake in April.
And that's not just another campaign promise.
Elite results
It's probably fair to say that pro angler John Crews of Salem won't be voting for Lake Amistad in any polls any time soon.
In the Elite Series tournament Crews finished 90th in the 100-angler field with a two-day catch of 18 pounds, 11 ounces.
Meanwhile, the region's other fulltime bass pro, David Dudley of Lynchburg, had a tough time at the Wal-Mart FLW Tour event at Missouri's Table Rock Lake.
Dudley finished 90th out of 156 anglers, with a two-day catch of 19 pounds, 3 ounces.
Dudley, who won the Angler of the Year points total on the FLW Tour last season, was coming off a third-place finish in the tour's season-opening tournament at Lake Guntersville.
