The contenders
In 10 years of FLW Tour competition, only eight men have competed in seven championships or more. Here, the elite eight reflect on the FLW Tour and memories of championships past.
In the 10 years that have passed since the advent of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the landscape of professional tournament fishing has changed dramatically. When looked back upon, the 1996 model is but a shadow of the 2005 version, with the most notable change being that more anglers are fishing now for a lot more money than they were back then.
One common denominator, though, remains the competitors themselves. Sure, there are a lot of members of the class of ’96 that no longer compete, and many successful pros got their start in the years that came later. But look back at the standings and results from those early years, and you’ll see a lot of familiar names – Alvin Shaw, David Walker, Dan Morehead, just to name a few.
In 10 years of FLW Tour competition, eight anglers have racked up at least seven championship appearances, and no one has more than eight. The FLW Tour Championship has undergone a tremendous amount of change over the years and currently features a love-it-or-hate-it bracket-style competition with the winner taking home a mind-blowing $500,000. Compare that to the $18,500 that Steve Daniel won as the very first FLW Tour champion, and you see how far the event has come in the last decade.
David Dudley was the first man to claim the $500,000 prize, and he joins Alvin Shaw and Clark Wendlandt as the only three to have earned eight trips to the FLW Tour Championship. Although Wendlandt will not qualify for the 2005 championship, the other two may very well earn a ninth, with Shaw having the best chance with a 31st-place ranking heading into the season’s final tournament. However, if history has taught us anything, it is that anything can happen on the FLW Tour. The possibility remains that Shaw and Dudley could end up ranking outside the top 48, denied a ninth championship appearance. If so, the original three would still be tied with eight appearances and would likely be joined by at least one of the five men who trail them with seven championship appearances: David Walker, Andy Morgan, Dan Morehead, Dion Hibdon and Tommy Biffle. However, only one of those five is ranked in the top 48 heading into the season’s final event, with Walker being right on the bubble in 48th place.
No matter who makes it to the 2005 show, the fact remains that these eight men represent the best of the best in 10 years of FLW Tour competition. Among them, they have nine wins, 83 top-10 finishes, two championship wins, four Angler of the Year titles and 79 years of experience on the FLW Tour. Who better to describe the FLW Tour, particularly the championship, then and now?
David Dudley
Lynchburg, Va.
8 championship appearances
1 championship win
At only 29 years old, David Dudley is categorized by many as one of the tour’s “young guns” and not one of its veterans, but his record tells a different story. The man once dubbed the “Manteo Machine” after his former residence in Manteo, N.C., began his FLW Tour career with a single tournament in 1996, but he actually won his first tournament when he was only 12 years old. With the help of his father James, Dudley continued to fish throughout high school, working as a roofer to accumulate the money he would need to start his bass-fishing career after graduation.
“Every time I put a nail in, I’d think, `More gas money to go fishing,'” Dudley said.
The hard work and determination paid off. At 18, Dudley was a full-fledged bass pro, competing in the Bassmaster trails before fishing the FLW Tour full-time in 1997.
“When FLW came in, I jumped on board and never looked back,” he said. “I see a lot more people with a purpose-driven life, trying to become professional fishermen, than I did years ago, and that’s due in large part to FLW, Irwin Jacobs and their vision. (The FLW Tour) has given us a hope and a promise that you can make a pretty good living in fishing.”
And few have made a better living at it than Dudley, who has a penchant for winning the big-money tournaments. In 2002, he famously earned the sport’s largest-ever cash award – $700,000 – at the Ranger M1 tournament in Mobile, Ala., and just over a year later, he became the first angler to earn the FLW Tour Championship’s $500,000 first-place prize with a win on the James River in Virginia.
“Everybody thinks (winning the championship) adds pressure, but it takes a lot of pressure off as a fisherman,” Dudley said. “You win that amount of money, I don’t care who you are, it takes a lot of pressure off you, performance-wise. But even though it takes a lot of pressure off, you still can’t be relaxed, because there’s no guarantee in fishing.”
Dudley has earned a lot of fame from his two lucrative wins, but he has maintained a career of solid consistency since 1997, when he ended his first full season ranked sixth. His highest-ever year-end finish was second in 2003, and his lowest so far is only 28th, where he finished 1998. He has earned a spot in every championship since he began fishing the tour full-time, though to hear him tell it, he did not get there fishing conservatively for points.
“People say those stupid sayings, like `I’m swinging for the fences’ or `I’m going for broke,'” Dudley said. “I go for broke no matter what I do, whether it’s fishing or racquetball. Winning, to me, is being on top in whatever you’re doing, and when people say they fish for points, it just eats me up, because all they did was level themselves off. They will never be able to climb that mountain anymore because they are satisfied with catching a few fish. When people say, `I swung for the fences,’ I want to say, `What did you do the other days?'”
No doubt Dudley has established himself as a fierce competitor on the water, and he is particularly competitive when it comes to the championship. He says he likes the opportunity to compete against only the top 48 pros for the half-million-dollar prize, and with the bracket-style format, you really don’t even have to topple the other 47 – just one bracket-mate for three days until you make the last day, when you compete against the rest of the final 12. The bracket-style competition, though, has chafed several competitors over the years, but Dudley likes the challenge.
“It’s like fishermen were sitting there like a bunch of old farts, and as soon as somebody makes a change, they’re going to grumble,” he said. “But the point is this: It doesn’t matter how (FLW) has it set up. I like the format. No matter the format, it still involves strategy and catching fish. All you do is play the game, no matter what they throw out at you, and whoever plays the game best wins. They can format it however they want. Strategize the best that you know how, and go out and win the tournament. It’s about thinking the game through.”
When Dudley took the championship victory in 2003, he was recently married with a brand-new baby son. He had tasted rich victory as a bachelor, but in the final moments of the ’03 championship, this new father realized he needed more. Even though he had a limit in the boat, Dudley began to practice what he preached, and the result was what only six men had ever achieved – an FLW Tour Championship victory.
“It was the end of the day, and here comes that statement, `Never be satisfied,'” he said. “I already had a limit in the boat, and I was going through the motions. I was sitting down in my seat and I said, `David, what the heck are you doing? You’re fishing for $500,000! Stand up and finish fishing the rest of the day.’ The next cast, I caught one and was able to cull, and I won by only a couple of ounces.”
As it was, Dudley defeated runner-up Harmon Davis by over a pound, though when he stepped up to the scale that day to weigh in his final fish, he only needed ounces to claim the victory. Now, two years after that historic win, Dudley is on the brink of the 2005 championship in 55th place, only seven slots outside the championship field with one tournament left to go.
“I expect I’m going to have an attitude,” says Dudley of what will happen if he earns a trip to this year’s championship. “I’m going to be hungry to do something. I’m going to have a hungry attitude.”
Clark Wendlandt
Cedar Park, Texas
8 championship appearances
It’s hard to imagine an FLW Tour competitor with more success than Clark Wendlandt. The 39-year-old Texan took Angler of the Year honors his first year on tour, and that was no beginner’s luck. In the years that followed, Wendlandt has earned three victories and 18 top-10s, and he earned his second Angler of the Year title in 2000. Until this year, he had never finished lower than 42nd in year-end rankings.
He’s also earned a total of four top-10 finishes in the FLW Tour Championship, taking ninth place three times in eight tries. His success at FLW Outdoors dates back to the Red Man days, and Wendlandt took his place among the All-American winners in 1992. From there, he went to BASS and began his FLW Tour career in 1997.
“When I first started fishing the FLW Tour, it was kind of the extra tour for me,” Wendlandt said. “BASS was the tour I was fishing full-time, and then FLW came along, and they had some great things to offer. When I came to an FLW tournament and went to registration and saw the people there, I really felt at home. I befriended a lot of people, and it’s kind of a good family atmosphere that ended up meaning a lot to me when I got to where I had to make a decision between FLW and BASS.”
Though Wendlandt will not be fishing in the 2005 championship, he has heretofore earned a championship berth every year he has competed. Wendlandt explained that not only is a championship berth good for your wallet, it also has a tremendous influence on your career as a whole, because it identifies you as a solid competitor.
“It’s a great sense of accomplishment in several different ways,” Wendlandt said of making the championship. “You’ve got the security that you’re going to earn a living, with $15,000 for last place. For a lot of us, it’s a big financial hit. You have the potential for winning half a million dollars fishing against only 47 people.
“If you qualify for the championship, you know you had a good, consistent year. You might not have won a tournament, but you didn’t really have any bad tournaments. To me, the consistency in tournament fishing is what you’re striving for. If you win a tournament and do badly in all the other events, you might have won a lot of money, but I look for consistency. Angler of the Year awards and making the championship are things that really mark a good fisherman.”
According to Wendlandt, versatility has been the key to his success and is the biggest reason he stands among the anglers with the most championship appearances. Being able to find several different ways to catch fish in a tournament, he says, brings consistency and, thus, success.
“I think what we’re seeing a lot more of in tournament fishing is that it has evolved to where versatility is the key,” he said. “One technique, one guy used to dominate a lot. Now, everybody does everything well.”
As an angler with more than a decade’s worth of experience, Wendlandt has experienced firsthand the explosive changes that have taken place in the sport, and to him, the demise of the “one technique, one guy” environment coupled with the massive rise in payouts has constituted the biggest change the sport has seen.
“When I first started in ’92, I would guess there were 30 guys who could make a living for their family fishing tournaments without having to do anything else,” he said. “FLW has opened it up, paying $10,000 down to 50th place and getting a bunch of nonendemic sponsors to come into the sport. That has made it such that there are a lot more fishermen and good pathways for young fishermen. Dave Lefebre, Anthony Gagliardi – they’ve got pathways to get up there and be able to compete. The way I see it is, there are a lot more guys who are able to make a living now, and it’s not just a dream that can’t be achieved.”
A staunch competitor, Wendlandt is not satisfied with four championship top-10s without a victory, and Wendlandt will almost certainly not settle for only eight championship appearances. To him, the most memorable FLW Tour Championship was 1998, when Davy Hite took the win on the Mississippi River. Wendlandt finished ninth.
“That was a neat tournament,” he said. “I made the top 10, and people caught them on a frog, fishing a topwater. I haven’t won one, but I felt like I at least had a shot in that one. Davy and I were really good friends at the time, and he won the tournament.”
As an FLW Tour competitor, Wendlandt has experienced the highs and lows, and along the way he’s learned a few things about fishing competitively and consistently. However, he knows that it is his ability to rise above the bad tournaments that has earned him his reputation as the model of consistency.
“If you’re really dialed in at a certain time, you’re going to do well,” he said. “But it’s the tournaments when things aren’t going right in practice and you somehow scramble around and not do poorly … if you can just have average finishes and make the money, you’ll make the championship rather easily.”
Alvin Shaw
State Road, N.C.
8 championship appearances
There has been only one year that Alvin Shaw did not qualify for the FLW Tour Championship – 2001. As many will remember, the championship that year – scheduled to be held on New York’s Lake Champlain in mid-September – was cancelled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. So with the absence of competition in 2001, Alvin Shaw, it seems, has competed in every FLW Tour Championship that has ever been held.
“I don’t know how to explain it; that was definitely a goal of mine to be able to compete and make every championship,” Shaw said. “It takes determination to try and compete against all of these great anglers we have out there.”
This year, Shaw has put himself in position to earn a ninth championship berth, ranking 31st on the strength of a historic season. A 10-year veteran of the FLW Tour, Shaw finally earned his first victory in 2005, and what made the win even more special was that it came during his third consecutive top-10 finish of the year. Only two other anglers, Rick Clunn and Bobby Lane, have accomplished that feat, and Lane also did it in 2005.
Not that Shaw didn’t come close – he’s scored eight top-10s over the years, and three of those have come in championship competition, including a seventh-place finish in 1996, when he fished the tour as a co-angler.
“I was a residential contractor,” Shaw said. “I fished that first year as a nonboater, and if you qualified in the top 10, they would let you switch to the pro side. I thought, `This is my opportunity to fish,’ because I could see that it was going to take off. I just felt like FLW had something going that BASS didn’t, and it had the potential to really be big. I didn’t know exactly how big, but while I had the opportunity, I felt I had to go pro.”
As fate would have it, at the very same time, Shaw had the opportunity to sell his part of the contracting business he owned with his two brothers. With cash in hand, Shaw switched to the pro side of the FLW Tour in 1997 and never looked back.
Over the years, Shaw has benefited from the rise in payouts that the FLW Tour has offered to its pros, and he believes that has been the primary catalyst for its phenomenal growth.
“More money definitely gives (the tour) more notoriety and more appeal to bring in some top-ranked anglers in the nation and around the world,” he said. “The competition part has really gotten a lot tougher since I first started. It makes better anglers out of everybody by bringing more money in. It makes it more competitive.”
In 1997, Shaw earned $900 as the No. 46 pro in the championship. In 2004, he finished 31st and earned $15,000 – a far cry from the early days. A lot of ink has been used to describe the changes in the FLW Tour Championship over the years, and most of the attention has focused on the money. Shaw says the payouts give the championship an obvious added value for the anglers – much more now than in years past.
“The 48th-place guy is guaranteed $15,000 – that’s big money from what it was in those first championships,” he said. “There wasn’t anything guaranteed at all other than a big first-place prize. That’s basically what you were fishing for if you made the championship. Now you’re guaranteed that minimum. The money, I guess, is what’s really made it – the prestige and everything.”
Shaw said earning a championship berth translates into respect not only from other competitors but sponsors as well, as they look at a championship ticket as proof that you, as an angler, were a good investment. To get there, though, Shaw says it takes nothing more than decent finishes.
“I’ve never really thought I’ve fished any other way but to try to win,” he said. “I take whatever is given to me at any particular tournament. You can fish to win without jeopardizing yourself. A lot of guys think they’re swinging for the fences, but it should still produce a decent finish, even if you’re fishing for a win. I don’t understand that terminology of fishing for a win and turning up 150th. That doesn’t make sense to me, with my way of thinking.”
In championship competition, Shaw has rarely finished outside of what would be considered decent range. With eight championships under his belt, Shaw has a lot of memories, including the time he came within yards of the winning hole and never knew it. The story takes place at the 1998 championship in Moline, Ill., which was won by Davy Hite.
“Here’s what happened in practice there,” he said. “I’m two locks up in whatever pool it was that Davy won it in. My motor missed a little bit on the way up, and I’m all the way up there by myself in practice, and my motor’s skipping. I may not get back home. I’m idling into the place where Davy won, but I didn’t know it at the time. Here comes a boat heading out of there. It’s Tommy Biffle.
“I waved at Tommy and said, `My boat’s messing with me; when are you heading back down?’ He said, `I’m heading back right now.’ Instead of going back and finding this place – Davy and Tommy shared it – my motor was skipping, and I told Tommy I’d follow him back to make sure I made it. I got that close to being in the same hole. I was that close.”
Hite won the tournament, Biffle finished second and Shaw took home 34th place. “Looking back at my record, it’s hard to look at almost winning these championships,” Shaw said. “I’ve got a fourth, a seventh and a ninth. If I can make one more, maybe I can win it.”
Dion Hibdon
Stover, Mo.
7 championship appearances
1 championship win
Dion Hibdon has a lot to say, but luckily for the listener, it’s nearly all worth hearing. After all, Hibdon is not only the son of a fishing legend, but he is also one of only three competitors to score wins in both the FLW Tour Championship and the Bassmaster Classic.
Upon graduation from high school in 1985, Hibdon joined his father Guido, himself a Classic winner, on the bass-fishing tours. “I’ve never done anything else, and it never sounds good when I say it,” Hibdon said. “I think I even made the Red Man regional when I was in high school. This is a business for Dad and me. We go and fish tournaments – that’s what we do.”
Hibdon described his childhood home as very family-oriented, with the children being the only thing holding back Guido Hibdon and his career. Dion was the youngest of three and the most avid fisherman, so when he finally graduated, it was both guns a blazin’ for the Hibdon men.
“We fished four circuits that had five or six tournaments apiece, so we hit the road full-time,” Hibdon said. “In ’85, when I graduated, we hit the bricks and never looked back.”
Hibdon signed up for the FLW Tour when it began in 1996, fishing four out of the six tournaments before fishing the full slate of events in ’97. He ranked 13th that year and continued his steady climb before experiencing his career year – so far – in 2000, when he ranked eighth in year-end points standings before taking the championship win.
“I had already won the Bassmaster Classic,” he said. “Winning one tournament shows you’ve got the talent to do that. Winning the second assures everybody that this guy’s for real.”
Hibdon’s success in major tournaments holds special meaning for him, he says, and the twin victories have given him confidence that he is a threat at any championship event, no matter the locale.
“Making it several times, I’ve gotten over the glamour part of it,” he said. “I stand around and talk to people and do all the hoopla that goes along with it, and if you let that blow your head up, it will. You have to keep everything in perspective. You’re there to fish a bass tournament.”
This levelheaded attitude, he says, comes from his father, who instilled in him early on the importance of remaining focused on the task at hand. One thing in particular that he passed on to his son is that you should never just be happy to be there.
“That’s a guy that didn’t expect to win – simple as that,” Hibdon said. “I’m never happy to be there. I’m happy to be there when I walk away a winner. Keeping the right attitude is hard to do in that championship. My dad, being a hardass all his life, is very hard when it comes to his competing, and he’s instilled a lot of that in me. The deal is, I’ve been there, I’ve done it, and the only thing I’m going to be satisfied with is winning.”
Hibdon acknowledges that his wisdom has come from 20 years on the road, fishing tournament after tournament and tasting sweet victory as well as bitter defeat. With his experience, his lineage and his two big victories, Hibdon has had the opportunity to share a lot of his insights with other people at various speaking engagements.
“I probably did 70 speaking engagements in 2000-2001, and that’s a lot of time in an airplane, but that’s the gravy train of it,” he said. “We’ve done things we never thought we’d ever do because of bass fishing, and basically two tournaments put you in the spotlight.”
Nowadays, the FLW Tour Championship is much bigger in scope and payout than it was in 2000, when Hibdon took the win. As such it garners much more attention and fame for the winner than it did even five years ago. Hibdon, for one, applauds the changes made to the FLW Tour Championship in the time since he won the crown.
“Just the huge payouts in the FLW Championship have actually changed the face of the whole sport, which I like,” he said. “It’s making us all a little better living, and it’s strictly because of the championship, I feel, because by the championship growing, the regular payouts in the tournaments have grown.
“We’d all like to say it’s not all about the money, but it has to be. The money’s got to come from somewhere. The FLW Championship has taken us to a whole new level, and it’s still growing.”
Hibdon will in all likelihood miss the 2005 championship, but he acknowledges that a championship berth proves that an angler is consistent and solid. However, he says other factors, such as stiffer competition and time-consuming off-the-water obligations, make it tougher than ever for an angler to put together a string of consistent finishes that will translate into a championship slot. Nevertheless, Hibdon still considers himself a fisherman who goes for the win first, points second.
“I’m probably the worst tournament fisherman who ever lived,” he said. “When I get a chance to win, that’s all I think about. I’m kind of a realist – I know when I have a chance at winning.”
Hibdon’s most recent top-10 performance, a ninth-place finish on Lake Toho in February 2005, was hindered, he says, by his reluctance to settle for anything less than the 20 pounds he brought in on day one.
“I didn’t want to catch 12 to 14 pounds of fish,” he said. “I wanted to catch 20 pounds. It hurts me every now and then – hurts the consistency. I’ve missed more championships in the past couple years than I have my whole life, because there are tournaments where I’ll go in the dumper because I thought I could win. These bass will turn you down so many times, and when they beat you, they beat you bad.”
Hibdon’s winning instinct, though, was the ticket to his championship victory. He felt strongly going in that he was going to be the winner, and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since then, the sport has continued to explode and is becoming a profitable TV entity, something Hibdon does not discount.
“TV has made it happen,” he said. “I think FLW right now has the best mousetrap. With Fox, I see no end to where it could go. We’ve all got to make a living, and by golly, we’ve got to grow. FLW is making things happen right now, and everybody else just needs to stand back and watch.”
David Walker
Sevierville, Tenn.
7 championship appearances
Although 10-year FLW Tour veteran David Walker may not have a win under his belt, by no means should he not be considered one of the tour’s greatest anglers. Forget the zero in the win column and look instead at his 12 top-10 finishes, seven championship appearances and, of course, his 1999 Angler of the Year award, and you’ve got yourself a top-notch veteran angler.
Walker’s impressive resume includes not only FLW Tour events but also EverStart Series and Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League tournaments dating back to the Red Man days. This season, he added FLW Redfish Series events to a schedule that also included BASS tournaments. Obviously, David Walker’s been busy.
Since he has been around the FLW Tour since day one, he has been a firsthand witness to its growth and expansion over the years. He recalls the pre-Family Fun Zone days with drive-through weigh-ins.
“I can remember that, pulling a boat to the tent,” he said. “It’s evolved quite a bit, and a lot has changed, but it still feels familiar to me because I’ve been around through all the changes. I’ve really enjoyed it.”
In the early days, Walker continued working at a factory when he wasn’t on the water. He gave it all up in 1999 and found major success.
“In ’99 I fished everything that I could,” he said. “That was the year I won Angler of the Year, and I’ve been fishing full time ever since.”
For Walker, who was unaware he ranked among the anglers with the most championship appearances, the biggest change he has seen involves the championship, as it has evolved from just another tournament to one of the sport’s premier events. His championship record is stellar: In seven attempts, he has finished in the top 20 six times, with his best being ninth in 1997.
“Before, you used to qualify for the championship, and it was kind of just another tournament,” he said. “But now, with the way it pays, it has really become something you try to make sure you qualify for, especially this year with it paying as much as it is down to last place. That’s a big deal as a fisherman – you’ve got to look at those payouts. Qualifying for it is a big relief, because you know you’ve paid your entry fees for the next year.”
As it stands now, Walker is the man on the line – he’s 48th heading into the last event, and only the top 48 will advance to this year’s championship.
“Oh my gosh, I’ve done that so many times,” Walker says of life on the bubble. “To be the guy just in the cut or just out of the cut … I think I’ve finished 11th several times and second a bunch of times.”
Walker started the year off with a couple of midpack finishes and one top 20, but he followed that up with a pair of bad tournaments, starting with the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake. As such, he’s thrilled to be 48th and not worse.
“If it had went the other way and I was climbing and hit 48th, I’d feel better, but I fell that far down, so I’m happy that I’m still in 48th,” he said. “It really makes me feel good going into the last one knowing that I haven’t ruined my chances, because that is so easy to do.”
Though Walker says he is familiar with the bubble syndrome, one thing that has not burned him yet is the bracket style of the FLW Tour Championship. Every year, it seems, there is one bracket with two competitors really whacking the fish, but only one can advance, while another guy can advance from another bracket without really catching much of anything because his opponent didn’t catch them either.
“I think the bracket format is probably the biggest change to me as far as the feel of the championship,” he said. “You’re only fishing against that one guy. That’s strange because you don’t do that in any other tournaments. So far I haven’t really been burned by it – the times I haven’t advanced, I’ve really not caught anything.”
Walker has fished every championship except 2001 and 2002, and as such he has seen it all – brackets, no brackets; big money, less money. In 10 years on tour, he has learned the value of a championship qualification and consciously takes steps during the season to ensure he’s among the 48 to fish tournament No. 7.
“Consistency is a hard thing to achieve, and (qualifying for championships) shows consistency,” Walker said. “There have been guys who have come and gone that have won tournaments, but it seems the guy who is consistent is going to be around the next year and the next year. That’s more important to me than anything else.”
Walker admits that the tournament win that still eludes him has caused him to make failed attempts to change his fishing strategy. He has found that when he departs from his points-first, wins-later strategy, it rarely to never works.
“I still haven’t had a big win, and it’s really bothering me at this point because I want that, and I’ve tried to do things and change the way I fish,” he said. “I tried to swing for the fences, and it’s usually done me a lot more damage than good. Afterwards, I’ve always felt really unfulfilled by that. I would much rather do this for a living full time and cash some good checks, and the win’s going to come around. Those middle-of-the-road checks are much better than they used to be. I don’t think I’m settling.”
Indeed, an angler finishing 50th in today’s world is a lot better off than he was when the FLW Tour started in 1996. Though the sport is rife with change, Walker says at its core, it is still the same.
“We’re still fishing the same things we did 20 years ago,” he said. “There’s still a five-bass limit. Takeoff time is still the same. The core of it hasn’t really changed; it’s just all that we’ve tacked on around it, and it’s grown so much.”
Walker also cited FLW’s ability to attract corporate sponsors from outside the fishing world as one of the major reasons why the tour has grown exponentially. Before, all anglers could hope for was a boat, motor or tackle sponsor. Nowadays, you see boats zipping through the water bearing the names of companies such as Kellogg’s, Fujifilm and Land O’Lakes. Also, FLW’s sheer existence, Walker says, translated into immediate and healthy growth in the sport.
“Before, it was a monopoly,” he said. “You set your own price; you do what you want to do. When FLW came along, it changed all that. I feel that has been a positive as well. It’s really made it a competition, which makes it stronger.”
Tommy Biffle
Wagoner, Okla.
7 championship appearances
It’s widely known that Tommy Biffle has finished in the No. 2 spot several times in his tournament career. Included in that list are two Bassmaster Classic seconds and three FLW Tour Championship runner-up performances – in 1997, 1998 and 2000.
“The first one, it was like, `Well, I’ve finished second; that’s pretty good,'” Biffle said. “The rest of them are all crap.”
It hasn’t been all bridesmaid for the Oklahoma pro, however. He took first place at the regular-season FLW Tour event on the Pascagoula River in 2001, and he’s been consistent enough over the years to earn a championship berth every year he has competed except 2004.
“It’s kind of like that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he said. “You’re supposed to make the championship every year. You’re supposed to make it for your sponsors. It’s the biggest payout of the year, and you’ve got to be there to win it.”
In terms of payouts, Biffle has earned about a fourth of his total FLW Outdoors earnings in FLW Tour Championship competition – not too shabby by anyone’s standards. It’s a long way from the glass factory in Tulsa, Okla., where he earned his paychecks before hitting the pro circuit full time in the late ’80s.
“It’s changed over the years a lot,” Biffle said. “I think this is my 20th year now to fish BASS, and I’ve seen it change a lot since FLW started. From the first, they’ve made BASS get better, and they’ve passed BASS, in my opinion. It’s just exciting to see it keep on growing and growing.”
Biffle began his FLW Tour career in 1996 with a single event, and in 1997, he competed in all six events on the schedule, ending up 18th in points. He has been a steady presence ever since, ranking as high as fourth in two different years – 2000 and 2003, the last year he qualified for the championship. After missing the 2004 competition, he hopes to be back in 2005. He is currently in 57th place heading into the final event, and when Biffle hits the Potomac, he says he’ll be fishing for a win.
“My thinking on that is, if you fish for the win and you do OK or you do decent, then you’re going to do well on the points,” he said. “The $10,000 for 50th place kind of hurts fishing for the win, because if you fish for the win, you can mess up and end up out of the top 50. But $10,000 for 50th is so good it kind of makes a guy want to fish conservatively. You want to make sure that if you’re going to swing for the fences, then you’ll hit a foul ball and come in 50th.”
Should Biffle qualify for the 2005 championship, he will first be looking for a win. But what about the possibility of a fourth FLW Tour Championship runner-up finish?
“You don’t want to finish second, but you can finish second or 10th – which one do you want to be?” he said. “Second’s not all that bad, but it’s nothing like first.”
Indeed, there is nothing like first place in a major event, but the FLW Tour Championship first-place prize takes the cake with its $500,000 award. Biffle would like to taste it, but he’s not too keen on what it takes to get there in terms of the championship’s bracket-style competition.
“I hate it,” he said. “I hate the way they changed it, because they changed it to more of a luck deal. Two times I’ve had either the biggest stringer or the second-biggest stringer and got knocked out. That’s the bad part of it.
“When they had a regular championship, that’s when I came in second three times. Since they changed it, I haven’t even been to play the last day. I don’t like it for that reason. I would a whole lot rather them go back to a regular tournament format and get away from the basketball deal.”
What Biffle does like about the championship experience involves the TV coverage. Camera crews in helicopters follow the final-round anglers to their fishing hole, offering a unique encounter with the pro behind the wheel of the boat.
“It’s neat when they fly a helicopter up there to film you coming or going,” he said. “I’ve had them follow me in the helicopter because I was making a long run or a wild run. I like to get where people mostly don’t go or can’t get to. When you can get there in a championship and you’ve got the area all to yourself, and you’re catching them and you’ve got a good shot to win, that’s a really good feeling.”
No doubt Biffle’s career will not end with seven championship appearances. After 20 years of pro fishing, he’s still as sharp as ever, and through that time he’s seen a lot of change in the industry – and he likes what he sees.
“They’ve all done a great job at FLW as far as growing the sport and making the payouts bigger and better,” he said. “It just keeps getting bigger and better every year.”
Dan Morehead
Paducah, Ky.
7 championship appearances
When people think of Dan Morehead, many of them immediately think Kentucky Lake. But don’t underestimate this native of the Bluegrass State. In 2003, he won $200,000 at the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake and landed his face on a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes as the Angler of the Year, proving once and for all that he is much more than just a Kentucky Lake stalwart.
In fact, a closer look at Morehead’s record indeed finds a lot of success on Kentucky and Barkley lakes, but Morehead does well at varied lakes across the country, proving that he is a formidable competitor on any body of water. Take, for instance, his 10 top-10 finishes in 10 years on the FLW Tour.
So far, Morehead has missed the championship only twice in his FLW Tour career, and he counts himself among the pros who have fished every FLW Tour event since it began in 1996.
“It’s changed and evolved dramatically,” he said. “I’m proud to say I’ve been a part of it.”
Morehead began his bass-fishing career after finishing his undergraduate degree at Murray State University. “Dad said I majored in bass and minored in school,” Morehead said. “The first semester I went to Murray State, all I did was deer hunt and bass fish. My dad jerked me out of school and gave me one of the crappiest jobs in all the world. I was on the dean’s list from there on.”
Morehead moved from the dean’s list to the winners’ list, racking up wins and experience in the BFL, where he’s a former LBL Division points champ, and the EverStart Series, where he recently took the Central Division points crown. In FLW Tour competition, Morehead may have qualified for seven championships, but he does not feel those events represent him at his finest. His best effort so far in championship competition was seventh place in 1999.
“I’ve been in seven championships and three Bassmaster Classics, and honestly, I’ve done piss-poor in all of them,” he said. “The only championship I did well in, at Fort Gibson, me and Terry (Bolton) both did well. It’s like we’re married, as much as we’re together on the road. We both did really good and made the top 10.”
Sure enough, Paducah, Ky., anglers Bolton and Morehead finished sixth and seventh, respectively, and Morehead earned $6,500 for his seventh-place finish. For comparison, consider the $15,000 he won in 2004 for finishing 45th.
“The championship was really not much more than another tournament,” Morehead said of the old days. “Obviously now, the first-place payout is just incredible, the show is getting superimpressive, and there’s lots of notoriety and prestige. It’s getting harder to make it every year.”
Currently, Morehead sits in 51st place with one more chance to jump into the top 48 and make the 2005 championship. He says that while anglers may joke about it, the fact remains that they spend their lives fishing for points, so making the championship is literally what their lives revolve around.
“As the years have gone by, undoubtedly the money has changed, but so has the prestige of making it,” he said. “You’ve got to be at the top of your game to qualify and just have the opportunity to fish for the half-million-dollar check. It’s one more line to put on your resume.”
Morehead’s own resume includes wins in several FLW Outdoors tournament trails, including two wins on the FLW Tour. As such, Morehead knows when he has a shot at taking the victory, and the veteran pro has learned how to adjust his fishing to either go for a win or simply accumulate points that will result in championship status.
“I always told my buddies Andy Morgan and Terry Bolton, when you win one and learn how to win, you know when you’ve got a shot to win and when you don’t,” he said. “When you feel like you’ve got that chance, take advantage of it and go for broke. If you’re struggling, fish conservatively, stretch out what you can and earn as many points as you can.”
Spoken like a former Angler of the Year. As for this year, if Morehead makes it to the championship, he’s going to try to reverse his championship fortunes by changing up his routine. In championships past, Morehead says, too much practice hurt him, as the conditions inevitably changed.
“My track record ain’t been too great,” he said. “Two years ago, I showed up and fished 10 days. By the time the competition started, I didn’t give a damn. Last year, I made four trips to Alabama and stayed a couple of days. Obviously that didn’t work too good.
“Even though it’s a half-million-dollar tournament, this year I’m going to show up four days before the tournament, and whatever happens, happens.”
In 10 years on the circuit, Morehead has seen people and ideas come and go, but one thing that has steadily increased over the past decade is attention and media coverage. Morehead himself is a prime example of that, having been a Corn Flakes cover boy on cereal boxes nationwide. He sees that as just the beginning of what could happen in the next few years in the sport of bass fishing.
“It ain’t no secret we’ve turned this into a spectator sport to get the public involved,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of coverage and a lot of publicity, and people are paying attention. Five years ago, we talked about this and wondered where the sport would be, and it’s surpassed my expectations. In five years, I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.”
Andy Morgan
Dayton, Tenn.
7 championship appearances
Before quietly earning a reputation as one of the most solid anglers on tour, Andy Morgan made a name for himself by earning more BFL points in one season than anyone has before or since. In that historic year, Morgan earned 292 out of a possible 300 points by winning four events and finishing second in the other two. That alone is enough to classify Morgan as one of the sport’s greats, but he has continued his reign of dominance in both the EverStart Series and the FLW Tour to further establish himself as a force to be reckoned with.
Morgan is another veteran angler who still has not captured that elusive first victory on the FLW Tour despite leading the field in several EverStart Series and BFL events over the years. Nevertheless, Morgan is perhaps one of the brightest examples of what would be called a solid angler, earning a trip to the FLW Tour Championship seven times since 1996 and racking up seven top-10s along the way, including fifth place at the inaugural championship in ’96.
When the FLW Tour began that year, Morgan had already established himself as an Operation Bass veteran, but he was looking for something more. To him, however, the very idea of driving from his home state of Tennessee to a tournament in Florida sounded preposterous.
“I wanted to crawl into something bigger,” Morgan said. “The FLW came around, and I was skeptical about going all the way to Okeechobee. I had never been farther than a couple hundred miles from here. Everybody was hyped up about how big it was going to get, and I was pretty skeptical.”
Morgan said the $1,200-plus entry fee required to fish the Forrest Wood Open on Kerr Lake that first year scared him off despite its $100,000 paycheck for first place. Morgan still managed to qualify for the championship that year despite missing that tournament plus another one due to a hernia operation. In 1997, though, the payouts went up again, and Morgan was on board for good.
“It was kind of shaky there at the start,” he said. “It’s never really turned around – it’s kept going and going and going. It was a great marketing scheme. The level of competition – the Rick Clunns – went up tremendously when they put the money up.”
Morgan said making the All-American in the early ’90s spurred him into craving more, but he didn’t like the idea of fishing for people he did not know at BASS. Encouraged by Bill Taylor and Charlie Evans – now, respectively, the FLW Tour tournament director and president of FLW Outdoors – Morgan began to realize the value that the FLW Tour was offering.
“When the FLW came along, I could see the writing on the wall then,” he said. “Six tournaments a year wasn’t all that much. I could stay around and work if I needed. But it’s gotten so big that I don’t work now; I just fish.”
With his work in the family electrical-supply house behind him, Morgan has concentrated solely on his fishing, and the focus has paid off. Morgan has competed in All-Americans, EverStart Series championships and, of course, seven FLW Tour championships, and he has seen the trend toward championship fishing instead of fishing for the win.
“The last couple of years, I’ve kind of changed my style of fishing some, and I’m not really pleased with that,” he said. “I’m kind of conservative. I’ve been trying to accumulate points for the championship because there’s so much money in incentives in contracts. You’re kind of thinking, `Well, I can go up here and catch a big stringer, or I can stay close and catch 8 or 10 pounds and get some points.’
“It’s kind of nerve-racking. There are a lot more people doing that, and I think a lot of it is the pressure of qualifying for these championships. It’s really stressful. To tell you how important the championship is, you worry about it all year. It’s good for your sponsor relationships and your pocketbook.”
Morgan recalls a time in the very first FLW Tour Championship when he led the field before the weights started over at zero. “I wish we didn’t have to start over! I remember that,” he says.
More than that, though, he remembers the championship on Lake Ferguson when he and good friend Dan Morehead made a long and brutally chilly run for 60 miles to Arkansas on the Mississippi River.
“The wind blew – oh, it was blowing in the 40s, raining sideways,” he said. “You talk about one horrible trip, and that Mississippi is some sort of rough. It took us two and a half hours to get back, and we were trying to cut all the corners we could. I look, and here comes Danny, and we’re kind of cutting up. He cuts this wing dam at the last second, and I thought, `He’s fixing to hit that wing dam, and we’re 60 miles from launch.’
“I will never forget that championship and that boat ride. I probably remember that one as well as any of them. About every 30 feet it was like having a wreck.”
Morgan’s most memorable championship experiences come from the early days, when anglers did not compete bracket-style for $500,000. Though the current format is unconventional, count Morgan among its fans.
“I actually really enjoyed it,” he said. “It’s a little different, but I liked it. As far as the championship in general, I think it’s gotten better and better and better. I’d like to see us get the prestige that the Classic gets. People are more familiar with the Classic than the Championship, and ours is so much more lucrative and better. To get that out there across the people, it’s going to take a little more work.
“I’d like to see FLW keep changing and changing until they get people to realize they’re the best. The anglers already realize it.”