Common dominators
A look at the FLW Tour’s Top 10 Money Winners
Professional bass fishing went from hayride to thrill ride with the introduction of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour in 1996, and since that fateful year, the stakes have risen to an astounding $6.8 million cash over seven events next season.
The FLW Tour proved that payouts in professional fishing could be elevated to much higher levels. Over the last seven years, the Wal-Mart FLW Tour has paid out more than $31.4 million to anglers, and it is no coincidence that the biggest benefactors of those payouts have been the sport’s highest-caliber veterans.
An examination of the FLW Tour’s top 10 money winners reveals several common denominators about successful bass pros. The most obvious linkage is fishing’s golden rule: There is no substitute for experience. Five of the Tour’s top 10 money winners were well-known professional bass-fishing veterans before the FLW Tour. Rick Clunn, Larry Nixon, Gary Klein, David Fritts and Tommy Biffle all have at least 20 years of professional tournament experience under their fishing caps. These anglers made definitive marks in professional fishing in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.
Another commonality is that these 10 anglers are predominantly power-bait fishermen. Jigs, tubes, spinner baits, crankbaits and buzzbaits are what delivered most of these pros into the FLW Tour’s top 10 money list.
Finally, these elite anglers share an extreme dedication to their profession. They are fierce competitors and tenacious workers. Only the darkness of night separates them from their boats, and sometimes that is not even a factor. Off the water their brains never stop thinking about better ways to catch bass.
On the eve of the historic $1.5 million Wal-Mart FLW Tour world championship of bass fishing, here is a look at the Tour’s top 10 money winners. But read fast. With a record $500,000 going to the winner of the 2003 championship, the list may soon have a new addition.
No. 1: Rick Clunn does not believe in fortune, luck or coincidences. It is, therefore, no accident that he is the FLW Tour’s current money leader with more than $830,000.
Clunn pioneered the use of meditation and visualization in competitive bass fishing. He borrowed the concept of “being in the zone” from other professional athletes and applied it to bass fishing with great success.
Another cornerstone of Clunn’s belief system is self-reliance on the water. He prefers to ignore outside influences and do his own thing when locating fish.
In 2000, Clunn won both the Wal-Mart Open and the Forrest Wood Open. Those victories were the direct result of his esoteric approach to bass fishing.
At the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake, he ignored the dock talk about sight-fishing on the lower end of the lake and ran upriver to fish a big crankbait for largemouths. At the Forrest Wood Open on Pickwick Lake, Clunn again ignored the many well-known hot spots and spent 12 hours a day during practice cranking miles of ledges until he found a small group of fish that no one else had discovered.
Even with his first Wal-Mart FLW Tour victory at Ross Barnett in 1997, Clunn strayed from conventional wisdom and caught fish on a buzzbait in February.
No. 2: In professional fishing there is a phenomenon where an angler shares a special kinship with a particular lake at a certain time of year. Team Kellogg’s pro Clark Wendlandt has that kinship with Arkansas’ Beaver Lake in April.
Fortunately for Wendlandt, the Wal-Mart Open is held on Beaver Lake every April, and better yet, it is one of the highest-paying events on the FLW Tour.
Of his FLW Tour career winnings, Wendlandt has netted $420,000 from Beaver Lake alone. His record there includes two wins (1999, 2001), a 10th-place finish in 2000 and a fourth-place finish in 2002.
Wendlandt’s third FLW Tour victory came on Lake Murray in 2000.
These wins are primarily the result of sight-fishing, but Wendlandt does not sight-fish with conventional finesse; his technique might be better described as “power” sight-fishing.
In addition to his victories, Wendlandt is the only angler in FLW Tour history to have earned the Land O’Lakes Angler of the Year title twice.
No. 3: When it comes to deep crankbait fishing, David Fritts is a pure genius. He understands the subtle aspects of deep cranking in a way that his competitors do not. When fish are biting crankbaits, Fritts can run away with a tournament – or an entire season.
In 1997, Fritts got on a cranking roll that would not stop. He cranked up victories at Lake Eufaula, Kentucky Lake and Lake Ferguson on the Mississippi River. He claimed a record fourth FLW Tour victory in 2001 on Lake Okeechobee with – you guessed it – a crankbait.
No. 4: In FLW Outdoors circles, Larry Nixon is referred to as “The General.” Nixon acquired the nickname because he is a seasoned veteran of the bass wars. When it comes to tournament-fishing strategy and on-the-water adaptation, Nixon is a master.
The General was a full-time fishing guide on Toledo Bend before becoming a professional angler. Being on the water every day, Nixon learned how the subtlest change in conditions had the biggest impact on bass behavior.
In tournaments, Nixon’s acute senses are always scanning the horizon for the slightest change in conditions. When he detects a change, he can predict what affect it will have on the bass. At times, he seems to know what the bass are going to do before they do.
On two occasions, The General used his vast experience to emerge victorious in FLW Tour events. He won the Lake St. Clair Forrest Wood Open in 2001 and the Wheeler Lake FLW Tour stop in 2002.
No. 5: Dion Hibdon was raised on competitive bass fishing the way Kyle Petty was raised on stock-car racing. Hibdon grew up under the guidance of his legendary angling father, Guido Hibdon, and inherited his father’s knack for light-line fishing. He is not, however, afraid to break out the heavy line and winch in bass on a big stick. That is how he won the 2000 FLW Tour Championship on the Red River.
Hibdon’s other FLW Tour winnings have come from steady fishing performances. Patience, persistence and thoroughness are his virtues. If he knows where fish are, he will badger them until they wave the white dorsal fin.
No. 6: “If I get them going on this roller jig, it’s over, man!” Those were Jim Moynagh’s famous words when he put on a jigging clinic on Lake Minnetonka at the Forrest Wood Open in 1997. His words, along with the $200,000 first-place prize, jump-started the young angler’s fishing career.
A year later the Team Lawry’s pro won $100,000 for finishing second in the Forrest Wood Open on the Connecticut River.
Moynagh has made up for his lack of experience on Southern impoundments with unyielding desire. He is usually one of the first to put in and last to take out during practice rounds. As a result of this hard work, he keeps some pretty impressive company in the FLW Tour top 10 money winners list.
No. 7: Gary Klein is another pro who shares a special kinship with a particular fishery: Tunica Lake on the Mississippi River.
For two years in a row, the FLW Tour visited Memphis, Tenn., on the Mississippi River. And for two years in a row, Klein rode down to the Tunica Pool, pulled out his big flipping sticks and flipped a 1/2-ounce Rattleback Jig into thick cover. Klein won both Memphis events and remains unchallenged at that venue.
No. 8: In 1998 Gerald Swindle was framing houses and “just getting by” when he traveled to Beaver Lake to fish the Wal-Mart Open. He won the inaugural event and pocketed $150,000. The win financed Swindle’s rise into the ranks of professional bass fishing.
Described by some as “off the hook,” Swindle fishes with a shoot-from-the-hip approach. He is a self-proclaimed master of junk fishing. Catching 10 bass on 10 different baits from 10 different places is just another day’s work for Swindle.
In addition to his 1998 win, Swindle finished second at the Wal-Mart Open in 2001.
No. 9: Castrol pro Darrel Robertson has a knack for winning big-money events. During the fall of 1999, he won the FLW Tour Championship and the lucrative Ranger M1. Even though his FLW Tour earnings are listed as little more than $400,000, his FLW Outdoors total earnings top a million dollars thanks to his $600,000 M1 victory.
Robertson is the only FLW Tour top 10 money winner who does not count on fishing full time for a living. In fact, his professional fishing career falls in line behind a cattle ranch and construction business in Oklahoma.
Robertson does, however, share the same penchant for power fishing as his other top-10 money-winning comrades. If you see him on the water, chances are he has a spinner bait, buzzbait or crankbait in his hand.
No. 10: Rounding out the FLW Tour’s top 10 money winners is Tommy Biffle. The cruel irony here is that Biffle could have been at the top of this list if his second-place finishes had been first-place finishes.
“Bridesmaid Biffle” has finished second in three FLW Tour Championships (1997, 1998 and 2000). He finally broke the curse in 2001 when he won the Pascagoula River FLW Tour event.
Biffle is known for his shallow-water jig-pitching ability. He has made a living off a 1/2-ounce rubber skirted jig tied to a flipping stick. His approach is simple: Find the gnarliest cover on a lake and make about 7,000 pitches to it per day.
His fishing style is geared toward catching quality over quantity. Biffle may not get as many bites as his competitors, but when he does catch one, he does not have to fumble around with a measuring board.