Story & Photos
BY DAN O’SULLIVAN
S
ome of you may know by now that I, my
family and our business - Advanced Angler.
com - have relocated to Rainbow City, Ala.
Rainbow City is a suburb of Gadsden, and the whole area is built up along the banks of Neely
Henry Lake, an impoundment of the Coosa River
system.
For those of you who don’t know, the Coosa
River is where California went to transplant spotted
bass into the reservoirs in Southern and Northern
California. That experiment would have to be deemed
an unmitigated success, especially when you consider
that the world record spotted bass has come out of
California twice, most recently by Keith Bryan with his
10.48-pound New Melones monster in February of
this year.
That little detour was just for a frame of reference,
but in truth, I’ve learned something other in my short
tenure as an Alabamian thus far that might help my
original home state’s anglers.
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First however, a little background as a preview for you.
In my travels over the past several years, I’ve had several industry representatives ask me what they had to do to figure out the California market for both products and events. The manufacturers all want to know what they need to do to reach the buyers of the West, and the tournament organizations have always wanted to figure out what motivates the Western angler to compete in tournaments.
I’ve always had answers of some sort when the topic of tackle came up. Having owned a lure company myself in the past, and helping River2Sea over the years, I have been able to know a lot about buying trends of the region for many years.
Now tournaments, those are a different story. With the success of the Future Pro Tour, it’s obvious that one category of anglers wants to feel like they are at a large event, that they are a part of
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