On the Western Front - Lack of Participation
By Terry Battisti
Northwestern Writer
Part Two
August 17, 2009
In the first piece of this series, I talked with Pacific Northwest angler Gene Batey regarding his opinion of why large-scale bass tournaments are failing in the west. His opinion came down to two different reasons: One, the organizations need to talk more to the western anglers, and two, the organizations need to fish lakes that are more central to the main population base.
In this piece, I talked with long time western angler Ron Colby to see what his thoughts were and what he would do to increase the success of major tournaments in the western states. Here’s what he had to say.
Ron Colby – It’s All About the Schedule
Colby has been a staunch tournament angler and supporter of the organizations for a number of years. He also works for GYCB and has his hands not only in tournament fishing but the bass fishing industry as a whole. Although he sees the tournament numbers dropping like the stock market of 2000, he says bait sales haven’t been too far off of the recent past, even with the decline of the economy. This means only one thing, people are still fishing.
So what does he think is the reason for the decline in tournament numbers?
“It all comes down to these organizations scheduling events either at bad times, on bad bodies of water or, even worse, on top of each other,” Colby said. “For example, when FLW schedules a National Guard event for Mead and has a Stren event scheduled for the next weekend at the Delta, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which tournament guys are going to sign up for.
“Mead is not a good place to hold an event any time of the year and they (FLW) shot themselves in the foot with that Stren schedule. Who wants to lay down $4,000 to fish a tournament where you might not even get bit when you could fish the Delta the next weekend for far less of an entry fee and whack the fish?
“Another scheduling snafu they had was the ’08 Shasta Series event,” he said. “If they had talked to anyone about Shasta they would have known the water would be too low to launch or hold an event of that size. Instead, they didn’t talk to anyone and at the last minute they changed the venue to the Delta. Normally this would be good but the problem they don’t seem to understand is anglers need to schedule their vacations to coordinate with the tournaments. By the time they rescheduled, there wasn’t time for anglers to reschedule and they lost participation.
“The economy has also hurt us out west, especially in California,” he said. “The main pool of anglers is located in California and a lot of these guys are construction workers or work in fields that have been hurt by the economy. This brings up another scheduling problem we’ve had out here. In order for the organization to make the guys up north feel good, they schedule an event in Washington. The problem is there aren’t as many anglers up there and when times are hard, the guys in California aren’t as willing to make that 2,000-mile round trip.”
“Out here isn’t like it is back east where you have a number of states side by side to draw from,” he said. “It’s a completely different mindset and to schedule events away from the major population base isn’t too smart.”
So what is his solution to the problem?
“It’s hard to say what the solution is,” he said. “I think first off they need to drop the entry fees. If that decreases the payout, so be it. There’s no perfect solution but they need to start somewhere.
“They also need to schedule their events wisely. No one wants to spend $4,000 and not get bit. They need to stagger their events and go where the fishing is historically good for that time of year.”
In the next installment, western Veteran Gary Dobyns gives his opinion of how the circuits could be more successful out west.