Tuesday, July 21, 2009
SML remains on BASS schedule
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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When tough economic conditions prompted BASS to trim its 2009 Elite Series schedule, the April event on Smith Mountain Lake made the cut.
Although the organization at first didn't touch its 2010 tour schedule, which had been announced when the 2009 slate was released, it seemed likely it would also be trimmed.
Sure enough, that revision was announced late last week, with BASS dropping three of next year's 11 planned tournaments.
Not only did Smith Mountain Lake's event survive, it got a boost.
Originally, the Smith Mountain Lake event was supposed be held in August 2010. On the new schedule, the event will be held April 15-18.
Yes, the August tournament would have been the final regular-season event on the tour, so the results would have finalized the tour's Angler of the Year race.
Other than that, it's hard to find something appealing about a daytime tournament at Smith Mountain Lake in August.
It's no accident that local bass clubs and groups rarely bother with daytime tournaments at Smith Mountain Lake during the summer.
Fishing is tough. The weather can be uncomfortably hot. And recreational boat traffic on the weekends can be annoying, to put it mildly.
The Elite Series pros got a taste of that kind of action when the tour made its first visit to Smith Mountain Lake in June of 2007.
Publicly, most pros were pretty gracious.
Privately, they were hardly thrilled with the conditions.
Things were much different this past April.
The weather was pleasant, recreational boat traffic was nearly nil and the fishing, while not easy, was at least satisfying.
An April tournament at Smith Mountain Lake far better serves the interests of this region's commerce and tourism officials, who are the ones out there trying to get these tournaments in the first place.
Tournaments have both short-term and long-term payoffs.
Out of the gate, they bring into the region people who rent houses and motel rooms, eat out, and contribute money to the economy.
But we're only talking about 100 anglers, many of whom share rental houses, and maybe a few diehard fans. A youth soccer tournament likely brings far more immediate revenue into the area.
The real payoff for a tournament is over the long run.
ESPN, the parent of BASS, gives the Elite Series events good play on ESPN2, various Web sites and in Bassmaster magazine.
That attention can be valuable if anglers are catching good fish in a pleasant setting.
But when anglers are fighting boat wakes while struggling for limits under a blazing summer sun, that's hardly going to prompt fishing tourists who see it to think, "Gee, that looks like fun. Let's book a trip to Smith Mountain Lake."
Case in point? The 2005 Bassmaster Classic in Pittsburgh.
The Three Rivers area can offer good fishing, and Pittsburgh itself is a pretty cool city to visit.
But when pro anglers are setting records for the lowest winning weight in a BASS tournament, it's not a good thing for boosting fishing-related tourism.
Smith Mountain Lake looked good after this past April's tournament, and it will look good after next April's.
The three lakes that got axed from next year's schedule were Amistad, Champlain and Erie. The tour will now culminate with the June 17-20 event on the Arkansas River in Muskogee, Okla.
The tour will feature a postseason, with dates and locations to be announced.
BASS also announced that it is bringing back its Elite Series Marshal program, which pairs citizen observers with the pro anglers.
Priority registration for BASS Federation Nation, Life and Insider members will open at 9 a.m. on Aug. 4. General registration for BASS members will open on Aug. 25. Additional details are at bassmaster.com.
Tech bass team triumphs
A team of anglers from Virginia Tech won Saturday's National Guard FLW College Fishing Northern Division 1000 Islands tournament on Lake Ontario.
Ryan Slate of Augusta, N.J., and Caleb Brown of Richmond had a six-bass catch of 18 pounds, 15 ounces, to top the 40-team field.
The Virginia Tech Bass Fishing Team club and the school will split the $10,000 top prize.
The pair qualified for the Northern Regional championship, to be held Nov. 7, on North Carolina's Lake Norman.
Longwood University's John McKinny and McKayla McGregor, both of Farmville, were second with a six-bass catch weighing 16 pounds, 2 ounces.
