The Greatest Fishing Show on Earth FLW Outdoors takes tournament fishing to unparalleled heights
3/22/2006 2:40:32 PM by Patrick Baker
When the electrifying exhibition reaches its climactic finish, the victor will raise a magnificent trophy high over his head to meet the confetti raining down from the rafters as a crowd-pleasingly ostentatious check is passed his way – the amount visible even from the back row, $500,000.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the scene of a Las Vegas title fight, though a significant title most assuredly hangs in the balance. This is the setting of the world’s most lucrative professional bass-fishing championship – the Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship – and 2005’s big show took place in Hot Springs, Ark., at Summit Arena.
The Bassmaster Classic, with its $1 million purse, has been called the “Super Bowl of bass fishing.” If that’s the case, the FLW Tour Championship could be considered professional fishing’s Olympic Games. The FLW Tour Championship pays out $1.5 million to the world’s elite pros and co-anglers who earn a berth into the no-entry-fee event. When FLW Outdoors unveils the Forrest Wood Cup in 2007 – with the first-ever $1 million cash prize in the history of tournament fishing available to the winning pro – the stakes will again be raised with an even larger total purse: $2 million.
To say that professional bass fishing has come a long way from its humble origins almost 40 years ago would be a massive understatement. The winner of the 2005 FLW Tour Championship title described above would know, because he’s basically been around since the beginning.
Former railroad brakeman and current FLW Tour pro George Cochran was fortunate enough to win his first FLW Tour Championship in front of his home-town crowd after a professional fishing career spanning nearly 30 years.
“It just tickles me to death, at 55, to win such a big tournament, especially with all my friends and family here,” Cochran said at the time. “It can’t get any better than this. Any victory is sweet, but to win a tournament like this is incredible. I’m getting close to the end of my career, and I’ve always dreamed of winning the FLW Championship.”
Having already won two Bassmaster Classics – the industry’s other tour-level championship – Cochran not only rounded out his resume last August by landing the FLW Tour title, he increased his career earnings by nearly 30 percent in a single day, earning the sport’s largest cash award.
The 2005 FLW Tour Championship marked the pinnacle of the circuit’s 10th anniversary season and a crowning achievement for FLW Outdoors, the world’s leading tournament-fishing organization.
In its decade-long climb to the top of tournament fishing, FLW Outdoors has established many industry benchmarks. The organization is poised to reach even greater heights in its 11th year, in turn raising the bar for the entire industry.
Professional fishing is so named for a reason: Its primary players are casting a line for a living. Offering anglers the kinds of tourney purses that take the profession from livable to lucrative is an area where FLW Outdoors has unmistakably turned the industry on its head.
“I feel like Forrest Gump,” Cochran said after receiving that oversized check with all the zeros. “Now I don’t have to worry about money for a while. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
“I never dreamed about how much money that was until I went to the bank. Everyone in the bank wanted to have that picture with me depositing that check. And that’s when it hit me: That was my retirement check.”
FLW Outdoors was the first tournament organization to offer a half-million-dollar cash payout for winning a tournament, and it is slated to break new ground again next year when the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup will offer the first-ever $1 million award for the pro champion. The new championship will pit top anglers from several of FLW Outdoors’ bass circuits in head-to-head competition, and this even bigger show will return to Hot Springs for its premiere.
“The 2005 FLW Tour Championship was by far the largest and most successful event we’ve ever held in the Hot Springs Convention Center since the construction of the Summit Arena in 2003,” said Steve Arrison, executive director for the Hot Springs Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. “With the top prize doubled and anglers
qualifying from all levels of FLW Outdoors competition, I expect the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup to really be something special.
“Hot Springs is a bass-fishing town situated along some fantastic lakes and full of fishing fans. There’s no better place to hold the most lucrative event in the history of the sport.”
But FLW Outdoors isn’t just frontloading its tournaments with cash for the sake of appearances. It’s spreading the prize money out to reward a majority of the anglers who constitute the backbone of the sport – not just the champions who are also likely to cash in on substantial endorsements and sponsorships.
“I never really thought this sport would become as big as it did,” Cochran’s wife, Debi, said in the wake of the 2005 championship. “At my husband’s first Classic, the last man got $600. It didn’t even pay for expenses to practice. Those guys fished it when the purse wasn’t so big – they fished it because they loved it.”
Now there’s much more to love for the anglers fishing FLW Outdoors events. The FLW Tour pays $100,000 to the pro winners and at least $10,000 cash down through 50th place in most of its events, meaning a full quarter of the pros competing will make money well beyond expenses. And the tour also boasts two events annually during the six-tournament regular season – the Wal-Mart Open and the Chevy Open – that pay $200,000 to the winning pro and extend lucrative payouts even farther down the standings, all in addition to the year-end championship.
In other words, the organization has made it possible for tournament anglers to make a decent living following their calling. This trend of continually growing purses extends beyond FLW Outdoors’ bass circuits to its walleye and saltwater trails as well.
But FLW Outdoors is much more than a money-generating apparatus for tournament anglers. As evidenced by Cochran’s enthusiasm for winning the championship – especially for a man who’d already won so much money and two titles before that – there’s obviously much more to these events than just a big payday; there’s tremendous prestige and mutual respect and admiration among
the competitors that only exists when a sport is operating at the highest level in the industry.
Professional fishing is an emerging industry. Just as stock car racing or football had a long history before NASCAR or the NFL became household names, pro angling has only begun to assert itself into the fabric of the American mainstream in recent years.
Fishing has always been one of the leading American pastimes and a major participatory sport. In fact, an estimated 55 million people in the United States alone go fishing annually. And just like the many children who grow up playing their favorite sports with dreams of becoming the next Hines Ward or LeBron James, there are countless kids who grow up wanting to be the next George Cochran.
Jason Knapp of Uniontown, Pa., is just one example of many young people who have realized their dreams of making a career out of fishing. After winning a tournament on New York’s picturesque Lake Champlain as a co-angler in 2004, Knapp won another tournament there last September, this time as a pro in the Stren Series, at a youthful 24.
“I don’t know what to say,” Knapp uttered after his landmark win, one that earned him almost $10,000 cash along with a brand-new Ranger boat package valued at another $40,000. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment forever, ever since I started fishing the BFLs when I was 16. This is just a dream come true.”
FLW Tour pro, Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series pro and two-time Wal-Mart Open winner Andre Moore of Alabaster, Ala., is another who has found fulfillment through fishing – on multiple fronts. Moore’s day job is to follow the tournament trail, but he was able to take his first major tournament paycheck and invest it in another dream. He used his first Wal-Mart Open winnings to create his own bait company, Reaction Innovations, which is now a successful enterprise on its own.
“I started fishing tournaments at 18 and went pro at 19. I’d always fished as a kid, always had a boat since I was 10 years old. I moved out to the West Coast and didn’t have a boat anymore,” Moore said. “I heard about these tournaments where you didn’t need a boat (to fish as a co-angler). I
fished a Red Man (now the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League or BFL) as my first tournament, and I got a check. Ever since then I was addicted to fishing tournaments.”
Not only did Moore find success as both an angler and an entrepreneur through fishing FLW Outdoors events, he also found true love. He recently married Australian angler Kim Bain, already an outdoors celebrity in her homeland, who has made quite a name for herself in FLW Outdoors competition as a pro and co-angler. The two met on the trail and now even fish together as a team in some FLW Redfish Series events.
Anyone who doubts that landing a fishing career is anything less than a burning dream for myriad children across the country need only hang around the stage inside a weigh-in tent after an FLW Outdoors event. These kids, clad in hats and shirts laden with sponsor logos just like their heroes, line up by the dozens in hopes of sharing a moment with the winning angler. You’d think many of the pro finalists were rock stars by the number of autographs they sign or by the number of smiles they flash for photographs with fans.
Combining that fact with the increased media attention fishing has received in recent years, the stage is set for angling to become one of the most burgeoning professional sports of the new millennium.
Along with increased fortune has come fame for FLW Tour anglers, who have been featured on “Late Night with David Letterman,” CNN and “World News Tonight,” as well as in the pages of Sports Illustrated, Time and USA Today.
It has been said that hitting the big time is a sure thing when you are lampooned in the world of comedy; last year Mike Iaconelli, one of the most recognizable iconic personalities in all of professional fishing as well as winner of FLW Outdoors’ 2005 Chevy Open, was featured on the Emmy Award-winning comedy news program, “The Daily Show.”
FLW Tour anglers are also annually featured on the cover of the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box. Additionally, FSN (Fox Sport Net) provides weekly coverage of FLW Outdoors events for a rapidly growing fan base in the United States. And the American Forces Network provides FLW Outdoors programming to 800,000 service members in 177 countries and aboard Navy ships around the world.
No, bass fishing isn’t what it used to be. It is a truly global sport that will receive international television coverage in 2006 thanks to a broadcasting agreement with Matchroom Sport that will provide FLW Outdoors programming to approximately 300 million households in Europe and Asia. Coupled with the 78 million U.S. households reached by FSN, this will make “FLW Outdoors” the world’s most widely distributed outdoor-sports television program.
FLW Outdoors, currently headquartered in Benton, Ky., was purchased by Irwin L. Jacobs, CEO of Genmar Holdings, in 1996. Jacobs recognized a growing demand among enthusiastic bass anglers for well-organized bass tournaments; he set out to meet that demand and has not looked back since. The company’s goal was to grow the sport and increase its participation base by supplying these anglers with plenty of opportunities to compete in professionally conducted bass tournaments.
FLW Outdoors currently administers 11 tournament circuits covering four species of fish. These circuits offer combined purses exceeding $36.9 million through the 241 events being held in 2006. Like many successful organizations, FLW Outdoors has grown over the years and diversified in the process. But it began much smaller, with only a few bass trails under its purview.
The BFL came into existence as the new-and-improved version of the longstanding Red Man Tournament Trail, a grass-roots league offering weekend bass tournaments with a celebrated history. The BFL formed the foundation of what was to become FLW Outdoors’ professional bass-fishing enterprise. With the creation of the organization’s flagship circuit, the FLW Tour, FLW Outdoors developed a bridge between the two levels: the Stren Series, formerly known as the EverStart Series.
In2000, FLW Outdoors ventured into the world of walleye fishing and now operates the Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour as well as the Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League, modeled after their tour-level and grass-roots level bass counterparts. As on the bass side, FLW Outdoors has responded to the anglers in terms of offering the right kinds of tournaments with payouts that can sustain careers for those with the talent and drive to pursue them.
2005 marked FLW Outdoors’ foray into the saltwater markets with the creation of the Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour, an offshore kingfish circuit, and the Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series, offering near-shore redfish tournaments.
Dieter Cardwell of Winston-Salem, N.C., has been on the trail of kingfish for about 25 years, wracking up many distinctions as a competitor essentially since the dawn of the sport. Cardwell, who was a charter member of the Southern Kingfish Association, captains a three-man team on the FLW Kingfish Tour, and he said FLW Outdoors has “brought some legitimacy” to the sport.
On the eve of FLW Outdoors’ entry into professional kingfishing in March 2005, Cardwell said, “It’s going to be a banner year for king mackerel fishing. You’re going to see excited growth with it; you’re going to see a lot more people wanting to come out and do this.”
Cardwell’s comments proved prescient, indeed, as the team slots for the 2005 Kingfish Tour filled in a flash. Demand was so great for well-run kingfish tournaments that FLW Outdoors created the Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Series, which debuts in 2006, to help accommodate the extreme interest expressed by anglers on a quest for coastal king mackerel.
Still in the midst of a tremendous growth spurt, FLW Outdoors will introduce the Wal-Mart FLW Series – a companion circuit to the FLW Tour – and administer yet another new bass circuit in 2006, the Stratos Owners Tournament Trail. Plans are already under way for another bass circuit in 2007 that will cater to tournament anglers who own Ranger boats.
FLW Outdoors’ exponential growth isn’t the result of willful corporate sprawl, however, or a coolly calculated business model. The expansion is rather a direct response to the tremendous and rapidly ballooning demand for high-stakes, high-profile tournaments. FLW Outdoors now offers opportunities to cash in on that $37 million in prize money to more anglers than ever; an astounding 90,000 entries are available across its 11 circuits in 2006.
The
money will only continue to grow in 2007 as FLW Outdoors administers more events for more anglers than ever. And next year a unique opportunity awaits bass anglers competing in FLW Outdoors events as the best from multiple circuits will all have a shot at the sport’s first-ever $1 million payday.
The no-entry-fee Forrest Wood Cup will indeed represent something special in the sport of bass fishing. For the first time, anglers from the weekend level of the BFL to the top level of the FLW Tour will have the opportunity to compete for bass fishing’s first $1 million prize, which will go to the winner if the winner is running a Ranger boat. A guaranteed first prize of $500,000 will be awarded to the winner regardless of boat brand.
Jacobs, also the chairman of FLW Outdoors, said: “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. That day has now arrived, and there is no one happier or more excited than me.”
In addition to the tournament and the international media coverage it will receive, there will be a world-class outdoor show with hundreds of exhibits and activities for children. Visitors from around the world will not only catch the world’s best bass-fishing action, they’ll also receive great buys on everything from crank baits to bass boats at the outdoor show.
Considering all this, it’s hardly a stretch to call it the greatest show on Earth.
FLW Outdoors Photos
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