The eyes of the bass fishing world will focus this week on Florida’s East Lake Tohopekaliga for the inaugural ESPN Outdoors Bassmaster Series National Championship.
Those eyes, however, may not recognize many of the faces in the crowd.
Instead of the well-known faces of BASS professionals, the field features the cream of the crop from the first year of competition in the new Bassmaster Series.
The competitors are ‘average Joes,’ if you will, not unlike your bass club buddies who slug it out in local tournaments every weekend all over the country.
But make no mistake: The competition is intense. At stake is a $100,000 winner’s check and the final berth in the 2006 CITGO Bassmaster Classic for boaters. The winning non-boater takes a $50,000 payday.
The ESPN Outdoors Bassmaster Series is a circuit designed for anglers who want to test their mettle in competitive bass fishing without devoting a lot of time or resources to the pursuit. With events scheduled on weekends and entry fees kept to a minimum, the venue opens the door to serious tournament fishing to the masses.
The 100 contenders in this week’s national championship – 50 boaters and 50 non-boaters – started their journey to East Lake Toho months ago. Five one-day events were held in each of 16 divisions, for a total of 80 tournaments. The best anglers from those divisions advanced to five regional tournaments, and the top anglers made it to this week’s championship.
And while the inaugural season culminates this week, competition for the 2006 Weekend Series season already is underway and heating up. In 2006, BASS expanded the number of divisions as well as tournaments, giving more anglers more opportunities to fish. Tournaments are scheduled across the country. For more information or to register, visit www.bassmaster.com.
Not just Toho
While attention is currently on Florida’s East Lake Tohopekaliga for the ESPN Outdoors Bassmaster Series championship, it soon will shift westward to the more famous West Lake Tohopekaliga, which is better known simply as Lake Toho.
Toho is well-known for its lunker largemouths. It’s the lake where in 2001, Texan and Elite Series pro Dean Rojas set the BASS record for overall and single-day heaviest weight at a BASS event.
And while Toho’s notoriety is well-deserved, many observers often forget the fishery is more than just Lake Toho proper. Actually, Toho is part of a chain of lakes along the Kissimmee River. Other lakes in the chain include Cypress Lake, Lake Kissimmee and Lake Hatchineha.
Each of the individual lakes is capable of yielding impressive catches, and according to some fisheries biologists, some of the lower lakes in the chain – Kissimmee and Hatchineha – may be the best.
Grand dilemma
The CITGO Bassmaster Elite Series will visit Oklahoma’s Grand Lake on June 1-4 for the “Sooner Run,” the sixth event of the 2006 Elite Series season.
And while no one’s hitting the panic button just yet, biologists in Oklahoma warn that low lake levels could mean potential challenges for anglers.
“If we don’t get some rain this spring, it won’t be pretty,” said Gene Gilliland, senior fishery biologist with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
Grand Lake, located in northeastern Oklahoma, is one of several lakes in that state that are currently well below normal pool levels. Broken Bow Lake in the southeastern corner of the state is down more than 15 feet, and Lake Eufaula, the Sooner State’s largest reservoir at more than 100,000 acres, is down about 6 feet.
Much of the Southern Plains is in the midst of a drought, with grass and forest fires burning hundreds of thousands of acres across parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
From a fisheries standpoint, biologists have expressed concerns that spawning conditions won’t be favorable for bass if rains don’t refill affected reservoirs. A more immediate concern is access. Low levels have left many boat ramps and docks high and dry.
“There’s not much we can do,” Gilliland explained. “Really, all we can do is hope and pray for rain.”
BASS officials said they are monitoring the situation closely.
BASS is the worldwide authority on bass fishing, sanctioning more than 20,000 events through the BASS Federation annually. Guided by its mission to serve all fishing fans, BASS sets the standard for credibility, professionalism, sportsmanship and conservation, as it has for nearly 40 years.
BASS stages bass fishing tournaments for every skill level and culminates with the CITGO Bassmaster Classic. Through its clubs, youth programs, aquatic resource advocacy, magazine publishing and multimedia platforms, BASS offers the industry's widest array of services and support to its nearly 550,000 members. The organization is headquartered in Celebration, Fla.
For more information, contact BASS Communications at (407) 566-2208. To join BASS, call 1-800-BASS-USA or visit www.bassmaster.com.
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