SHREVEPORT, La. – Four of Missouri’s own will fish for a share of $800,000 at the Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship presented by Castrol Sept. 11-14 on Cross Lake near Shreveport, La.
Rick Clunn of Ava, Dion Hibdon of Stover, Guido Hibdon of Gravois Mills and Fujifilm’s Randy Blaukat of Lamar will represent the Show Me State in a field of 48 Pro Division anglers.
Clunn qualified as the No. 11 seed and will fish head-to-head against No. 38 seed Paul Elias of Pachuta, Miss., for the first two days of competition. The angler with the heaviest weight will advance to the semifinal round of 24 anglers.
Clunn is one of the more accomplished FLW Tour anglers, with three tournament wins and 15 top-10 finishes since 1997. Clunn finished in the top 10 twice in 2002 with an eighth-place finish on Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita in March and a 10th-place showing at the Forrest Wood Open on New York’s Lake Champlain in June. Clunn has fished the Wal-Mart FLW Tour for six years and is making his fifth championship appearance. He has career earnings in excess of $777,000 through the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the EverStart Series. One of Elias’ three career top-10 FLW Tour finishes came in 2002 with a seventh-place finish on Lake Ouachita. He also finished in the 25th spot at the Forrest Wood Open. This is Elias’ fourth championship appearance in six years on the FLW Tour. His career earnings total more than $126,000.
No. 19 seed Dion Hibdon will face No. 30 seed Keith Williams of Conway, Ark., in an interesting matchup that pairs two sons of legends. Hibdon, son of championship contender Guido Hibdon, earned two top-10 spots in 2002, including a sixth-place finish at the Ranger M1 on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta near Mobile, Ala., 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. Williams, son of professional 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.
Bass-fishing legend Guido Hibdon qualified in the 22nd spot and will face No. 27 seed Chuck Economou of Redington Shores, Fla. Hibdon has fished the Wal-Mart FLW Tour since its inception in 1996 and has earned close to $190,000 via the FLW Tour and the Ranger M1. This is Hibdon’s fifth championship appearance. His highest finish in 2002 was a 23rd-place run at Lake Ouachita. Like Hibdon, Economou is a seven-year veteran of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and has also fished the EverStart Series, the Wal-Mart BFL and the Texas Tournament Trail. His career earnings total more than $127,000. Economou’s best finish in 2002 was a 16th-place effort at the season opener on Florida’s Lake Okeechobee in January. This is his third championship appearance.
Blaukat will enter the tournament as the No. 43 seed and will take on No. 6 seed Mike Wurm of Hot Springs, Ark., on days one and two. Blaukat finished second in this year’s Ranger M1, taking home a $110,000 paycheck. He has five top-10 FLW Tour finishes and career earnings in excess of $260,000. Wurm, a 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 career earnings on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the Ranger M1 exceed $217,000.
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.