Mike Wurm and Rob Kilby of Hot Springs, Keith Williams of Conway and Larry Nixon of Bee Branch will represent the Natural State in a field of 48 Pro Division anglers.
Wurm qualified as the No. 6 seed and will fish head-to-head against No. 43 seed Randy Blaukat of Lamar, Mo., for the first two days of competition. The angler with the heaviest weight will advance to the semifinal round of 24 anglers.
Wurm, a seven-year Wal-Mart FLW Tour veteran, has finished in the top 10 in five tournaments since 1998, including a win on Lake Murray in Columbia, S.C., in 1999. His best finish in 2002 was an 11th-place showing at the Wal-Mart Open on Arkansas’ Beaver Lake in April. His career earnings on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the Ranger M1 exceed $217,000. This is his fourth championship appearance. Blaukat finished second in this year’s Ranger M1 on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta near Mobile, Ala., taking home a $110,000 paycheck. He has five top-10 FLW Tour finishes and career earnings in excess of $260,000. This is his fourth championship appearance.
No. 30 seed Williams will face No. 19 seed Dion Hibdon of Stover, Mo., in an interesting matchup that pairs two sons of legends. Williams, son of successful angler Jerry Williams, earned his first top-five finish in an FLW Tour event this season with a fifth-place effort at Wheeler Lake in Rogersville, Ala., in February. He has earned more than $63,000 via the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the EverStart Series, the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League and the Ranger M1. Hibdon, son of bass-fishing legend Guido Hibdon, earned two top-10 spots in 2002, including a sixth-place finish at the Ranger M1 in the spring and a ninth-place effort at the FLW Tour stop on Old Hickory Lake near Gallatin, Tenn., in May. Hibdon has earned more than $423,000 through the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the Ranger M1. He won the FLW Tour Championship in 2000.
Kilby, who qualified as the No. 33 seed, will be paired with No. 16 seed Aaron Martens of Castaic, Calif. Kilby is fishing in his fifth consecutive Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship. His bass-fishing career includes three top-10 finishes on the FLW Tour with career earnings exceeding $200,000. West Coast angler Martens added a second top-10 finish to his resume in 2002 with a second-place finish on Wheeler Lake. Martens has also competed in the Wal-Mart BFL and the Ranger M1 and has earned more than $135,000. This is his second year on the FLW Tour.
Chevy pro Nixon, who qualified in the No. 35 spot, will fish against another Chevy pro, No. 14 seed Tom Mann Jr. of Buford, Ga., in the first two days of competition. The legendary Nixon is approaching a half million dollars in career earnings on the FLW Tour since 1998, and he put another mark in his win column in 2002 with a first-place effort on Wheeler Lake. This is his fifth championship appearance. Mann has three top-10 finishes on the FLW Tour to his credit. His best finish in 2002 was a 14th-place finish on Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita in March. His career earnings on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the Ranger M1 exceed $230,000. This is his fourth championship appearance.
This year’s Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship features a setup unlike any bass-fishing championship in the history of the sport. The 48 pros who qualified based on their year-end point total will be seeded so fishing fans can keep up with their favorite anglers in a bracket-style competition similar to the NCAA basketball playoffs. The No. 1 seed will fish head-to-head against the No. 48 seed; the No. 2 seed will compete against the No. 47 seed and so on.
The top 48 pros will fish for a combined two-day weight to eliminate half the field for the semifinal round on day three. The 24 semifinalists will continue in head-to-head competition on day three, after which the field will be cut to 12 finalists.
On day four, the remaining 12 anglers will be reseeded according to their total weight from the first three days of competition. Anglers seeded No. 1 and No. 2 will compete for the first- and second-place cash awards of $260,000 and $55,000. The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will compete for third- and fourth-place money of $34,500 and $29,000, and so on. The pro who finishes last in the no-entry-fee championship will take $2,000.
Co-angler competition will end on day three. A full field of 48 co-anglers will fish for a combined two-day weight to advance to the 24-slot final round. Weights are then cleared, with the weight on day three determining the Co-angler Division champion, who will collect $25,000 cash. The co-angler finishing 48th will receive $500.
Named after Ranger Boats founder, Forrest L. Wood, the Wal-Mart FLW Tour is run by FLW Outdoors, the world’s leading marketer of competitive fishing tournaments. Wal-Mart signed on as title sponsor of the FLW Tour in 1996 and has since expanded its sponsorship of FLW Outdoors’ fishing tournaments to include the EverStart Series, Wal-Mart BFL, Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail, Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Circuit and Ranger M1. FLW Outdoors will award anglers as much as $22 million in 2002 through 170 tournaments nationwide.