Sunday, April 12, 2009
Beat the Elites status uncertain
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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In less than two weeks, 100 of the best bass anglers in the country will descend on Smith Mountain Lake.
They'll be here for the Blue Ridge Brawl, a stop on the Bassmaster Elite Series which is to bass fishing what the NBA is to basketball.
It's the big leagues.
For a while, it appeared those pros might have had a little extra company on the water.
Hey, what's this "for a while" thing?
We'll get to that.
First, a little background.
Early this year a few weekend anglers from the Roanoke area announced they were going to hold a tournament on those same four days -- April 23-26.
The entry fee of $450 for boaters and $225 for non-boaters would allow for a hefty purse, with the winning boater taking home $12,000 if 100 boaters entered.
The format would be exactly like the Elite Series, with the field cut to 50 anglers after two days, and to 12 for the final day.
This would give these guys a chance to see how they stack up against bass heroes like Mike Iaconelli, Kevin VanDam and Skeet Reese.
Hence the tournament's name: Beat the Elites.
It turns out the guys taking a serious beat-down have been the ones who came up with the Beat the Elites idea.
As word of Beat the Elites got out, the backlash train got rolling. And rolling good.
Message boards have been burning up with the topic.
Elite Series angler Kevin Short wrote about it on his blog.
Even Bassmaster Magazine editor James Hall has tackled the topic.
There has been some support for the local tournament. You know, it's a public lake so why shouldn't these guys get a chance to fish?
Indeed, weekend tournaments sometimes run concurrently with pro events. And plenty of local fishermen fish for fun during pro tournaments, too.
But most of the feedback has been less kind.
Bringing BASS and all its TV cameras here during a prime fishing time can really give the Smith Mountain Lake some nice attention, some critics have said.
Is it really a good idea to risk mucking it up?
But, mainly, Beat the Elites-bashers just think the whole concept is rude.
"These people were building a tournament to spite our efforts there and I think that's in poor taste," wrote Hall.
His comment pretty well captures the general feeling from critics, most of whom are weekenders who would love to know how they could do against the pros, but who figure it is just good manners to let those guys have the lake to themselves for a few days.
The volume of the criticism caught tournament organizers by surprise.
In February, I spoke by phone with the head organizer, Bill Ward, who was stung by the criticism but not backing down.
Ward said there were positives to the tournament, among them potential economic impact for local tackle shops, who stand to benefit from amateurs, but not from pros who arrive with most of the gear they need.
When BASS did away with the Elite Series co-angler division -- for fishermen who fish from the back of pros' boats -- the move eliminated that part of the equation. Beat the Elites, with its all-amateur field, would bring it back.
From the beginning, the Beat the Elites tourney has not been a sure thing.
Ward said he wouldn't hold the event unless he got a reasonable number of entries.
A few weeks ago I started trying to reach Ward by phone and e-mail to see how it was going.
I've been trying ever since.
Other than an e-mail saying they would make the call early this past week, my queries have gone unanswered.
The tournament's Web site offers a clue, touting a new "Big Fish" contest. The entry fee is $50 a day and anglers can fish any or all of the days from April 23-26 with a daily winner who will get 80 percent of the pot.
This format is similar to the one the Optimist Club of Cave Spring uses for its tournament, which will be at Smith Mountain Lake the following weekend. Except the Optimist Club's tournament covers six species, the $40 entry fee covers all three days, and proceeds go for a good cause.
So, is the Beat the Elites Big Fish contest in addition to the Elite Series format event? Or instead of?
It's unclear.
What is becoming clear is that all this concern about how a bunch of weekend bass anglers were going to blow up the Blue Ridge Brawl appears to have been much ado about nothing.
There may be a few amateurs out there fishing for cash those four days. But certainly not enough to alter the fishing.
The only guy beating the elites that weekend will be the top pro.
