With FLW Outdoors, big-time competitive saltwater fishing has finally arrived
2/6/2006 6:09:36 PM by JEFF SCHROEDER
It's a gorgeous October Saturday afternoon in Morehead City, N.C. Several hundred tanned faces are milling around a small armada of shiny, 35-foot fishing boats conspicuously positioned, of all places, in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart.
Suddenly, like a school of fish, all the faces turn to gawk as an impressive, police-led motorcade of 10 more trucks and big boats makes its grand entrance. A murmur rises from the crowd as digital cameras emerge from pockets to document the land-locked boat parade. As if on cue, the throng melts away from the imposing Wellcrafts and Hydra- Sports on the tarmac and filters toward the front of a stage emblazoned with a giant fishing hook.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the inaugural Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour Championship," bellows a folksy Kentucky drawl over the sound system. "Today, we have big money on the line. The anglers are here and they're ready to go, so let's get this show started!"
The drawl belongs to Dan Grimes, tournament director for the newly launched FLW Kingfish Tour, and the show is the final weigh-in for the season-ending championship. All week long, the nation's top kingfish teams have been trolling the waters off the North Carolina coast in the hopes that their efforts would lead them here.
For an hour, Grimes plays ringmaster as team after team brings its biggest king mackerel to the stage in a cavalcade of teeth and scales, much to the crowd's delight. When the final team, Early Riser, mounts the stage and heaves a 20-pound, 1-ounce kingfish high into the air, an appreciative roar erupts. With a flourish, Grimes announces Early Riser as the 2005 Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour Championship winner.
Amid much high-fiving and revelry onstage, crew member Robert Daugherty and his teammates pass off the fish and hoist the day's most coveted trophy: a $150,000 winner's check.
"We came such a long way in just a week, said Daugherty.And we're proud to be the first winners of the season to be in a Wellcraft!"
There is a Promethean shift under way in the world of saltwater fishing tournaments, and it's starting in kingfishing and redfishing. This year, the industry took a huge stride toward a new reality, where saying you make a living as a "professional redfish angler" or "professional kingfish angler" no longer elicits curious stares from nonanglers. To understand this transformation, it helps to examine what happened to its freshwater counterpart, pro bass fishing, over the last decade because what happened there is about to happen here.
In the summer of 1996, Minneapolis businessman Irwin Jacobs purchased a bass-fishing tournament company known as Operation Bass. At the time, the company was a modest outfit based out of Kentucky that mostly catered to weekend-warrior-type bass anglers across the nation, offering them a chance to compete against each other for a little money and a lot of bragging rights.
Jacobs managed to recruit the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, into signing on as the lead sponsor for the company's pro-level, marquee circuit, the FLW Tour. It was a historic agreement in two ways: 1) Wal-Mart had never sponsored any outside business venture before; and 2) competitive fishing not just bass fishing would never be the same again. With Wal-Mart came a slew of other big-name companies not endemic to fishing ranging from Chevy to Kellogg's to Pedigree that were eager to tap into a sporting market that claims roughly 50 million participants, which is more than golf and tennis combined.
With a rich stable of corporate backers, the Wal-Mart FLW Tour quickly grew into a juggernaut. Gone were the days where pro bass anglers were competing for their own entry fees and prize packages consisting of fishing products they didn't need. By 1997, anglers on the seven-event FLW Tour were taking home $100,000 for first place. Every year since 2003, the tour championship has guaranteed an unprecedented $500,000 to the winner.
The "FLW" in FLW Outdoors stands for Forrest L. Wood, the much-revered founder of Ranger Boat Company. A self-made pioneer known as "the father of modern bass fishing," Wood lent his name to the company, giving it instant credibility.
It's no coincidence, either, that while Wood founded Ranger Boats, Jacobs now owns it. In fact, before he became chairman of FLW Outdoors, Jacobs was and continues to be the CEO of Genmar Holdings Inc., one of the world's largest manufacturers of recreational boats. Genmar not only includes Ranger, but 13 other powerboat brands that range from entry-level runabouts to luxury yachts. In its offshore fishing division, Champion, Hydra-Sports, Seaswirl, Triumph and Wellcraft all fall under the purview of Genmar.
That was what Jacobs had in mind when, last year, he announced the creation of two new competitive saltwater fishing circuits under the FLW Outdoors umbrella: the Wal- Mart FLW Kingfish Tour and the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series. In the bass and walleye worlds, it's no secret that FLW Outdoors uses its tournaments as a vehicle to promote sales of Genmar-brand boats particularly Ranger, Stratos and Champion by offering priority entry and prize incentives to tournament anglers who own them. Jacobs makes no bones about his motives: He's here, unapologetically, to sell more boats. In doing so, he understands that creating a bigger tournament-fishing market not only benefits boat sales, but it benefits anglers in general by creating ever-increasing opportunities to fish and make money doing it.
"Our model is very clear," Jacobs said. "We've got a relationship with Wal-Mart, which is clearly the glue that created this whole thing. And, along with them came these companies who do business with them, who want to see fishing grow, because they've now been a part of it for so many years and because fishermen are very loyal to companies that support their sport. In turn, I think that is a value to Wal-Mart.
"This might sound strange, but we do not plan to make money in our tournament business," Jacobs said. "It is a model to grow our boating business and our sponsors' businesses. I hope someday we can be profitable because our investment has been huge. But in the meantime, our boat business is what this was all about to start with."
With a handful of Genmar-brand boats vying for offshore market share, Jacobs and FLW Outdoors saw an opportunity. Redfish and kingfish tournaments have been a part of the fabric of the coastal fishing community for years, particularly in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and all along the Gulf Coast. Tournament-fishing circuits like the Inshore Fishing Association Redfish Tour (IFA) and the Southern Kingfish Association (SKA) many of whose competitors fish from Genmar boats hold tournaments throughout the Southeast. When FLW introduced its Redfish Series and Kingfish Tour in 2005, it blew the lid off the payout structures the anglers had come to know. And, for those fishing from Genmar boats like Champion, Hydra-Sports, Ranger, Seaswirl and Wellcraft particularly those running Yamaha motors the reward was even more mind-blowing.
"We've been waiting a long time for this. For the last five years, all we've heard is, 'Next year, redfishing is going to hit it big.' And now it feels like that year is finally here," said Florida professional redfish angler Greg Watts. "We have all seen what FLW has done for professional bass fishing, and now that FLW has stepped up to the plate in redfishing, it has really lit a fire under a lot of guys."
The main reason for the enthusiasm, of course, is the cash. The 2005 FLW Redfish Series had a total $1.9 million cash purse for the taking. The eight qualifying events each boasted a $200,000 purse and the no-entry-fee championship, a $300,000 purse. The 2005 FLW Kingfish Tour saw a total $1.7 million purse, with four qualifying events boasting $300,000 purses each and the no-entry-fee championship $500,000. Not only that, contingency bonuses meant that prize money basically doubled for everyone running a Genmar boat and Yamaha motor.
It had the desired effect. For the anglers, this was more cash than they'd ever fished for before. For boat dealers, it was a huge boon, as well. Bryan Edwards, a dealer for Carolina Boat and Yacht in Charleston and Little River, S.C., estimated he saw a 20- to 30-percent increase in sales after FLW Outdoors announced its registration dates for the 2005 FLW Kingfish Tour.
Even FLW Outdoors was surprised by the huge demand for big-time saltwater tournaments. Last year, the tournaments fields for the 2005 FLW Kingfish Tour filled within the first 48 hours of registration. Response to the inaugural 2005 season was so great that the company has expanded field size for the 2006 tour and developed a complementary feeder circuit, called the Wal-Mart Kingfish Series, also set to launch in 2006. The $1.8 million Kingfish Series encompasses five divisions, each filled with three $100,000 qualifying events. The one-day, Saturday tournament offers as much as $30,000 to the winner.
"The demand for a lucrative, professionally operated kingfish trail is obviously very high," FLW Outdoors CEO Charlie Evans said. "We did not want to exclude anglers who have a desire to compete."
FLW Outdoors isn't just about selling boats, however; its main objective is to create the infrastructure and "grow the sport of fishing," as they say, so that the portion of 50 million American anglers who want to compete can and make a living at it.
To that end, their efforts at raising the profile of competitive fishing on all fronts are unparalleled. Currently, the "FLW Outdoors" television show - featuring broad coverage of all its major events, including the Kingfish Tour and Redfish Series is broadcast to about 80 million homes every Sunday on FSN (Fox Sports Net) around the nation at 11 a.m. EST. Over the years, its tournaments have been featured on national TV programs and have made countless imprints in national print publications and on the Web, as well.
In the end, it's the financial effort spearheaded by Wal-Mart and the other sponsors that routinely puts FLW Outdoors ahead of the pack. The $150,000 that Team Early Riser earned at the 2005 FLW Kingfish Tour Championship was the largest cash prize ever awarded in the history of competitive kingfishing. In 2007, the FLW Tour will make history by offering a million dollars to the winner of the newly minted Forrest Wood Cup bass championship.
"When we started the Wal-Mart FLW Tour 10 years ago, I hoped and believed that there would come a day when professional anglers would have the opportunity to compete in one of our tournaments for a million-dollar payday," Jacobs said. "That day has now arrived, and there is no one happier or more excited than me."
Still, dollars and cents aside, there seems to be something else attracting anglers and fans to FLW Outdoors events. It's less tangible than the goal of making money, but it's there, particularly at the new saltwater events. It's an enthusiasm for the game, a drive to compete, which permeates every tournament venue. Starting in 2006, FLW Outdoors will offer more than 93,000 slots to competitors throughout its tournament circuits, providing an unparalleled wealth of opportunity for anglers of all types who simply want to go out and prove they can catch bigger fish than the other guy.
2006 FLW KINGFISH TOUR
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2006 FLW REDFISH SERIES West Division |