Why a Membership fees

[Scott Shambre]

First off, Korny is a friend that I have learned alot about the business from and if I ever had an issue, I know I could count on a straight answer from him. As for 100% Bass, it is the top of the pile here in Northern California and after the SoCal guys get a wiff of what 100% Bass is about, they'll be on top down there. Brian Linehan and Chris Johnson will be great assets to an already great organization.

WON has not been, nor will it ever be the way it was when Mike Kennedy (god rest his soul) was running the show. There is an arrogance about the way they do things to the point of not be able to take precautionary critique at all. I experienced this personally 2 yrs. ago when I brought a fish handling issue (F&G permit violation) to the local TD's attention and he blew me off. I then took the issue to his boss, that would be you Bill, and you never had the decency to return my email with so much as a K.M.A. It is no wonder that your numbers are suffering statewide with the exception of Mr. Bill Cook and Ron Cervenkas regions. Watch these guys, they'll show you how to get it done right! How you can have a region on the greatest body of water in the west, Clear Lake, and not hammer out 50+ boats every date defies logic.

Anglers Choice is good and my good friend Terry Davis and my new friend Danny Peluso are stand up guys that can be trusted. If I wasn't doing what I'm doing on Folsom I'ld work for them in a minute.

ABA, get your TOC payback right or you will lose everything in NorCal. Paying the last 3 positions $750 in your TOC for not even weighing a fish is criminal to the guys that fished well and got nothing or robbed of what they earned.

Not to leave myself out, the FBL doesn't claim nor will it ever claim to have the greatest payback. As a matter of fact we run at about 69-71% every event, but we do put out over $600 in sponsor product and have put together some really great expense paid trips for the anglers that support us this year. Aside from that, we work hard to take care our anglers and make our share of mistakes from time to time. I cannot compete on the level of 100%, WON, A/C or ABA except on a service basis. They all have boats at their TOC where I never will have a boat to give away, but my anglers knopw what they got in front of them and they keep coming back. We must be doing something right.

Bottom line fellas, quit bashing each other because in some way we all suck to some anlgers out there and some think we're just swell. Work to educate all of our anglers to protect the resource and our freedom to be able to bring our events to them.

Scott Shambre

[Guest]

Hey Jim,
I agree.. I like the way Danny Peluso does it. I heard last event he printed out the sheet and passed it around at the weigh in,... Showing who was in the options and who wasn't! I am pretty sure he plans to do this all season.

Danny is the best and hopefully, he'll get the rest of the TD's for AC in doing the same.

[Bill Hutcheson]

Scott,

I started off in this string with a simple detailed yet professional explaination to a fellow "nutcase" regarding what membership fees are all about. I never started out saying anything negative about anyone or any organization. Despite this, I have been sniped at and had to respond appropriately to the parties involved.
Unfortunately, I must once again respond to what I feel was a personal jibe.

I don't know where you figured you would jump in and contribute anything positive here other than to pile onto "bashing" bandwagon. You said at the end of your post to keep things from getting "personal", but that was the first thing you did wasn't it Scott?

You did indeed send me an e-mail regarding issues in one of our regions. I addressed your concerns with the TD in question and took care of the issues invovled I'm truly sorry if you were hurt by me not completely including you in what was an internal WON BASS matter.

What I find interesting thought that most people are not aware of is this e-mail was sent at a time when you were in the process of ramping up your own circuit to compete in this same region.
Seems your e-mail was a bit self serving now wasn't it but you didn't mention that in your post. And you wonder why you received no warm and fuzzy reply from me.

I can assure you that I am just a bit more privy to what goes on at WON BASS than you are. Yes, our numbers are down from what they were in the heyday when Mike Kennedy was running events. But as Mike Moffett has just mentioned, the landscape of bass tournaments has changed dramatically in the past few years with a significant increase in tournament circuits vying for a fixed number of sponsor dollars. Blame me for this if you want. I know the facts and I am big enough to handle it.

Some have called me "unprofessional" because I call things like I see them. If this falls into your definition of arrogance, then so be it. Scott, I'm not a politician - I'm someone who gets things done.

I will once again state this for all to hear so we can be done once and for all with this "My Johnson is bigger than yours" B.S.. Each tournament organization works hard to provide the anglers the most that they can for their entry/membership fees. No organization is getting rich in the process. We all payback close to the same amount when all expenses and such are backed out and sponsors prizes are added. We all work hard for you. Anglers are free to select the circuit they feel works best for them. This is America so go fish!!!!!

I'm off to Alaska to go tangle with some critters, so you all enjoy!

Bill Hutcheson
WON BASS Tournament Director

[Jim Conlow Sr.]

I always get a friendly greeting and good natured kidding from all of them.
I especially like the way all of you guys expedite the draw. You all seem to recognize that we already know the rules and that you dont need to take a half hour of our time to reexplaine them to us.
I like the way that you guys dont feel like you need to do a 5 minute commercial for every one of your sponsors. I like the fact that you dont introduce everyone of your tournament officials. We all know who they are. I like the way you conduct your blastoffs and your weighin, including the fact that we can all see the numbers on the scale.
I occasionally fish tournaments with some of the other orgs. But you guys are in my opinion the one that the others need to learn from.
There are truly only small differences.
The one area that I feel that you all need to improve in is some kind of traffic control at the blast off so that the boats get themselves in some kind of reasonable order so that we dont always have to thread our way from the back to the front through a bunch of people who are going to be going out later. I know that about all you can do is to explaine this to the fishermen at the draw but perhaps this would help. But think about how it was done at Bigbreak for the Frog tournament where we had 305 boats. you handed us a map and designated a staging area for the boats so that they could leave in an orderly fasion
In addition to this I would like to see the boats being allowed to start at safe light instead of later. Quite often we are loosing the early morning bite because of too many delays at blast off.
I dont think we should all have to wait because other fishermen didnt get launched in time.

[Tobe]

*NM*

[clayton meyer]

FLW is a company that has benefits for their members.

Would any of you be willing to fish the BFL circuit again? Weekends only, since this is a criteria for most of you.
Low cost... National publicity, boater($200) and non boater($100) entries.

a few emails to the right place might get it to happen and would answer all of your questions as to where the money goes and one of you guys with motivation could take charge and take credit for the idea


This is the site for FLW membership benefits copy/paste.

http://www.flwoutdoors.com/apps/flwextras/mainpage.cfm