Bass Fishing's Newest Millionaire
Nov/Dec '07 issue
Professional bass fishing saw history made on August 5th, 2007. That's the day Arkansas angler Scott Suggs became the sport's newest million dollar man.
Suggs, 40, won the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita near Hot Springs, Ark. The “Cup” is FLW Outdoors' year-end championship that brings together the top pro and co-angler qualifiers from a series of its bass tournament circuits and gives them the opportunity to cast for lavish amounts of cash. Last year's top prize on the pro division was $500,000. FLW doubled the stakes this year with an additional $500,000 in Ranger Boats incentive money.
Suggs was running the right boat and grabbed the million-dollar prize with a final round total of 17-pounds, 1-ounce. FLW Outdoors chairman Irwin Jacobs presented him the check before a standing-room-only crowd that gathered inside Summit Arena on a sultry Sunday afternoon.
Suggs' accomplishment is monumental for several reasons. Perhaps the most noteworthy is the mountain of cash he won participating in a sport that Inside Line readers and millions of other anglers have grown to love so much. I'm still mind-boggled by the deal. If you had told me 25 years ago that we would be able to fish for a $1,000,000 purse today, I probably would have labeled you a dreamer. But it happened. And it will happen again, next year, when FLW hosts the 2008 'Cup on Lake Murray in Columbia, S.C.
I'm sure lots of eyes will be on ESPN and BASS in coming months to see the reaction. If you will recall, BASS followed suit a few years back after FLW bumped its first place championship pay day to $500,000. Will the Elite Series field see a $1 million check on the table in a future Bassmaster Classic? Time will tell.
Something else that stands out about Suggs' victory is the fact he managed to overcome the proverbial home-lake jinx and win the tournament on a lake he has been visiting since he was just a toddler. It can be tough to win on a lake you know like the back of your hand, particularly when the fishing is tough. Local anglers have a history of locking in and trying to force something to happen when they know too much about a fishery. I've seen it happen time and again.
That wasn't the case with Suggs. His intimate knowledge of the Ouachita and the bass that live there are the ultimate reasons he is now a millionaire. Not only does Suggs know the lake, he knows how the bass behave when weird things happen. And lots of weird things happened leading up to this tournament.
For starters, heavy rain caused the lake level to climb several feet above normal pool during June and July. The high water hampered the growth of aquatic vegetation and ultimately prevented the hydrilla from forming a good canopy for flipping -- a popular go-to tactic on the Ouachita during the dead of summer.
Then the Corp of Engineers started pulling the water and sucked it several feet below pool level by tournament time. Suggs figured out early on during practice that the grass bite wasn't going to be the way to win. That's when he went looking elsewhere and discovered something that no one else found: suspended bass along submerged timberlines in water ranging 30-70 feet deep.
Suggs exploited the bass using two lures: a 3/4- ounce spinnerbait and a Texas-rig worm. The keys, he said, were working the lures in 22 feet of water using erratic retrieves and having a passel of spots to choose from.
"There were some fish in the grass, but I didn't think I could win it there," Suggs said. "I felt like the fish had suspended, so I went looking at some old breaking holes -- places where the fish school on the surface during the fall. I knew from past experience that they live deep during summer in those types of places."