Florida momentum watch: All eyes on Texas

East v. West Fish-Off at Amistad a good primer for upcoming Toho picks

Fantasy players might want to pay close attention this week to what’s going on at the Texas border with Mexico. There, on the vaunted bass fishery on the Rio Grande known as Lake Amistad, 60 of the nation’s best pros are fishing mano a mano in the FLW Series East-West Fish-Off to determine who gets to go to the $2 million Forrest Wood Cup this summer.

This is going to be a fun tournament, and certainly one to keep your eye on as we gear up for the FLW Tour opener at Lake Toho. Not only is Lake Amistad one of the best bass fisheries in the country – it holds the FLW Outdoors record for heaviest limit (37 pounds) and big bass (14 pounds, 8 ounces) – but, in an unusual new format, it pits the very best anglers from East versus the very best from the West. Of the 60 pros fishing, exactly 30 of them will win a berth into the Cup.

This is no gimmick tournament. On the surface, it sort of appears that way since there’s no money on the line save a gratuitous $25,000 check to the overall weight winner. Everyone else gets zero. But judging by the names in the field – most of whom are used to fishing for checks of $125,000 and larger – this tournament means a whole lot more than money. It’s an East Coast v. West Coast thing – bass fishing’s version of Biggie v. Tupac, though obviously not nearly as ridiculous – and, to put it bluntly, there’s a lot of pride on the line in Texas this week.

A little background here: The East-West Fish-Off is the culmination of the FLW Series, which is divided into two divisions: Eastern and Western. FLW Outdoors launched the FLW Series two years ago as a way to give certain sponsor-challenged pros an opportunity to fish for FLW Tour-type money without them having to bow to sponsor requirements. A huge success out East in its first year, FLW Outdoors also brought the FLW Series out West last year, finally giving the Western pros a geographically reasonable pro-level tour to fish, for which they have been thirsting for years. With the FLW Series, all anglers regardless of sponsor affiliation or what coast they live on can compete in tournaments for checks up to $125,000.

The Fish-Off happening this week on Amistad – the first tournament of its kind, though the yearend Cup did tinker with a similar bracket format for a couple years – takes the top 30 pros from each FLW Series division last year, East and West, and pits them against each other for a chance to qualify for the 2008 Cup even before the FLW Tour season starts. This is important to fantasy players in several ways:

1) Many of the anglers fishing there this week also fish the FLW Tour. In fact, most of the Eastern Fish-Off pros are also in the field for Lake Toho, and many of them are good candidates to make your picks list. A quick glance at the Amistad field and you see names like David Walker, David Fritts, Koby Kreiger, J.T. Kenney, Clark Wendlandt, David Dudley, Dave Lefebre, George Cochran, Scott Martin, Dan Morehead, Matt Herren, Mark Rose, Chris Baumgardner, Andy Morgan, Larry Nixon and Dion Hibdon, to name more than a few. Each and every one of these guys would make a good pick for Lake Toho, for various reasons, and you might be able to get a read on how they’re fishing at the moment and the momentum they will carry into Toho based on how they catch them at Amistad.

2) It will help you get to know your Western pros. Mark my words, this will be a huge factor in the outcome of the $1 million FLW Fantasy Fishing overall winner. Remember, the points you earn with your picks at the Forrest Wood Cup in August are triple what you earn at the qualifying events and double what you earn at the opens. Bottom line: Your Cup picks are everything in the chase for the million. Something you may not know is that the Cup field will look a whole lot different than what you see during the regular season. There are going to be a bunch of new names on the list, mostly from the West and most of them qualified through this Amistad tournament. Many Western pros are using the FLW Series as a kind of backdoor route to fish for the $1 million Cup prize this year, and this Fish-Off is basically what that is. Many of the top Western pros can’t or won’t commit to fishing the FLW Tour full-time, even if they’re qualified, because most of the tournaments are held out East, too far away for it to be economically feasible. Still, the Jimmy Reeses, Mike Tucks and Justin Kerrs of the bass world sure would like a crack at some of the FLW Tour guys, which are mainly Eastern pros, they see on TV every weekend – not to mention a million dollars. Well, now they have that opportunity, at Amistad. And guess what? Amistad – a deep, gin-clear impoundment with some of the biggest bass in the country – plays right into their hands. And believe me, these Western guys will play a factor at Lake Murray in August. They always do at the Cup. I’ve seen Gary Dobyns and Mike Folkestad – two huge sticks who could fish the tour but choose not to – catch so many 9- and 10-pound fish out of Clear Lake and the California Delta, I’m certain they’ll feel right at home going after the big 8- to 10-pounders in Lake Murray. It’s going to be fun to watch if they make it there. And, whichever of these Western pros do make it out of Amistad as winners, it would behoove you as a fantasy player to give them some serious consideration for a precious Cup pick even though they aren’t fishing the FLW Tour regular season.

3) You may discover who the best “big-bass” anglers are right now. Lake Amistad and Lake Toho aren’t very similar fisheries in most respects. Amistad is deep, clear and sits out in the middle of nowhere down on the Mexican border. Toho is shallow, stained, grassy and sits within spitting distance of a major metropolitan area, Orlando, Fla. They both have one thing in common, however: huge bass. As mentioned previously, the heaviest one-day limit in FLW Outdoors history, 37 pounds, came out of Lake Amistad last year. The heaviest limit ever recorded in tournament-fishing history – 45 pounds, 2 ounces – came out of Lake Toho in a 2001 BASS event. So they both have huge fish in them; the trick is figuring out how to find them and then catch them. And that’s most often what separates the wheat from the chaff in tournament fishing: knowing how to catch the big fish. Most of the guys in the Fish-Off have proven more than capable on that front over the years (otherwise they wouldn’t be there), but at the end of this week we’ll see exactly who is dialed into the big bite right now.

Of course, perhaps a better indication of what we can expect at Lake Toho might come from the first FLW Series tournament already held this year. That one, 2008’s first Eastern Division event, was held at Lake Okeechobee at the end of January. Okeechobee, in Florida, fishes very much similar to Toho with its shallow, dirty water and miles of grass mats. And we all know who came out ahead in that one – again: J.T. Kenney.

But that’s a topic for another discussion.

In the meantime, enjoy the FLW Series East-West Fish-Off this week. Opening takeoff starts at 7 a.m. Central time Thursday, Feb. 7, at Lake Amistad Marina in Del Rio, Texas, and the anglers are fishing for three days, through Saturday. Weigh-ins each day begin at 3 p.m. If you can’t be there in person, don’t miss it on FLW Live, beginning each day at 3 p.m. Central. It could very much be worth your while.