South Carolina has been blessed this year to have the two most-prestigious bass-fishing tournaments in the nation held on its waters. The Bassmasters Classic visited Lake Hartwell and Greenville this past February, and the Forrest Wood Cup, the championship of the FLW Tour, will make Lake Murray and Columbia its home base in two weeks.The Cup, scheduled for Aug. 14-17, will run out of Lake Murray Marina and Yacht Club, with daily weigh-ins at USC’s Colonial Center. An accompanying outdoors show and “fun zone” will be headquartered at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
Forrest Wood is the founder of Ranger Boat Co., for years the most famous manufacturer of bass boats in North America. Ranger was a sponsor of the BASS Tournament Trail for years; when that association ended in the 1990s, the FLW Tour was born.
Officials at Ranger, which was replaced as BASS’s boat sponsor by a competitor, were looking for a way to market their boats when Irwin Jacobs, the CEO of Ranger’s parent company, hit on the idea of starting a second major tournament trail. He bought Operation Bass, a Kentucky operation that put on a nationwide trail of weekend tournaments and made the FLW Tour its centerpiece.
For a handful of years, FLW Tour and BASS Tournament Trail schedules were careful to avoid conflicting days, so the nation’s best bass fishermen could compete on both — if they had the money and plenty of gasoline for their tow vehicles and boats. South Carolina’s own Davy Hite, a columnist for this magazine, fished both circuits for a while. Fishing as a pro for the first time in 1993, he started on the BASS circuit. He was BASS Angler of the Year in 1997. He won the FLW Tour Championship in 1998. He won the Bassmasters Classic in 1999, and he was BASS Angler of the Year again in 2002.
The chance to fish both tours ended a handful of years ago with the inevitable scheduling conflicts, and pros had to decide which trail to fish. It was not a particularly happy divorce. Decisions were not always made by the pros, but by their sponsors. In a nutshell, if you rode in a Ranger or Stratos bass boat, you fished FLW. If you rode in a Triton bass boat, you fished BASS. If you hung a Mercury outboard off the transom of your boat, you fished BASS. If you hung a Yamaha or Evinrude, it was FLW.
Jacobs and FLW Outdoors, the parent company of a dozen or more tournament trails that have branched out into walleye, striped bass, king mackerel and redfish, is to be credited with a number of accomplishments that have changed professional bass fishing for the better.
The most obvious is the bass boat as floating billboard. Almost every pro on both the BASS and FLW trails now pilots a boat that is basically a 20-foot decal for a sponsor. Having gotten retail giant Wal-Mart onboard, the FLW Tour attracted major sponsors from outside the traditional marine industry who jumped at the chance to position themselves as friends of Wal-Mart. Sponsors put together “teams” of pros to wear their colors on their boats as well as their clothing. Sponsors on the BASS trail followed suit, and pros also cut deals with companies that weren’t directly associated with the trails. Nowadays, everybody’s boat is “wrapped.”
Prize money was another big change. In the early 1990s, fishermen were routinely fishing for first-prize money of $40,000 and $50,000 in major tournaments. Flush with sponsor money, FLW punched that number up to $100,000. The winner on Lake Murray in two weeks will get a minimum of $500,000 — a million if he’s riding in a Ranger. BASS, in competition for the same pros, didn’t take long to follow suit. Alton Jones won $500,000 for finishing first in the Bassmasters Classic on Lake Hartwell.
So while the Bassmasters Classic is still considered the “World Series” of bass fishing, some of the sport’s biggest names compete in FLW events. At least four former Bassmasters Classic champions will be in the field at Lake Murray: David Fritts, George Cochran, Dion Hibdon and Larry Nixon. Two more, Jay Yelas and Luke Clawson, look like a cinch to qualify. That’s major league, no matter how you measure it.
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