Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1999
By: John Husar
It should come as no surprise that Chicago’s legion of outdoors folk were short-sheeted by some arrogant marketing fools in TV-land. They just didn’t grasp the interest here in fishing. After weeks of build up on Fox’s NFL telecasts, the nations first big-time “live” fishing tourney was relegated in Chicago to a tape-delayed broadcast.
To their credit, the telecast did a fine job of transmitting the tension of fishing under the clock, of culling fish to gain an ounce or two of overall weight. With 10 finalists from a field of 200 scouring five lakes in Winter Haven, Fla., in the final hour of a three-day event incomprehensibly dubbed the Ranger M1 Millennium Tournament, cameras picked up the catch of a 3-pound, 6-ounce bass that enabled Darrel Robertson of Jay, Okla., to take home a hefty $600,000 first prize.