On the Western Front - Lack of Participation
By Terry Battisti
Northwestern Writer
Part One
August 11, 2009
In some way or another, I’ve been involved with bass fishing in the west since the mid-70s. I was essentially raised in what was, at the time, the quintessential tackle shop of the west – the shop where the big guns of the day came to buy tackle or shoot the bull before or after one of their trips.
Frequent customers of this shop included Rich Tauber, Don Iovino, Chuck English, Don Doty and a litany of other western stalwarts in the tournament scene at that time. There were also guys like Dave Gliebe and Gary Klein who would stop by while en-route to an event at Lake Mead, Powell or Mojave.
A common topic of those days was the fact that there were great anglers out west yet none of them had the name recognition of their southern counterparts. The obvious reason for this was the Bass Anglers Sportsman’s Society (B.A.S.S. – with periods) was stationed out of the south and was the only game in town that offered national status to its anglers.
Yes, there was Western Bass, the South Western Association of Bass (SWAB), U.S. Bass and eventually WON Bass, but those were all regional organizations and, although they provided a regional spotlight for anglers, they didn’t garner the same respect, magazine or television coverage as B.A.S.S. In order for a western angler to have a shot at national coverage, the angler had to pack up and either move south or manage the burden of long drives in order to compete at that level.
Western sticks like Dee Thomas and Dave Gliebe were a couple of the first western anglers who actually drove back east to compete – both leaving their marks on the sport – while Gary Klein did it for a year or so and then made Texas his home in order to pursue his passion fulltime.
Still many anglers on the Left Coast wanted to compete at that level but were unable to do so. The talk in the west was always, “We’re just as good as the guys in the south but we aren’t given the opportunities they have.” Then in 1996 B.A.S.S. announced it would be starting a Western Invitational trail.
That announcement gave western anglers the hope they’d dreamed of. They’d now be able to qualify for the Bassmaster Top 150 and also be able to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic. During its first two years, the trail flourished but soon participation dwindled and BASS (no periods) pulled out of the west in 2005.
Around the early 2000s, FLW also started holding tournaments out west. First was the EverStart series in 2003 (which became the Stren series in 2006) and then in 2007 the Western National Guard series. Again, as in the BASS tournaments, participation was high at first but in the last couple years has dropped to below 100 boats per event. With numbers like that, it’ll only be a matter of time before FLW decides the west isn’t worth investing in and they too will pull out.
So, my question is this: If so many western anglers want a shot at the big leagues, why don’t they fish the events that will give them the opportunity to do so?
Having never fished a large tournament series, I feel I’m not the one to answer my own question. Therefore, in order to try and get to the bottom of this downward trend, I decided to ask that question to three western anglers who have supported or continue to support the tournament organizations to see what their opinions were. And, since the west covers so much area, I also wanted to pick three anglers located in different regions of the west. Those anglers turned out to be Ron Colby of Page, AZ, Gary Dobyns of Yuba City, CA, and Gene Batey of Pasco, WA. All three of these anglers are well-respected individuals on the tournament scene and have a voice as to why the major organizations are failing in the west.
Gene Batey – Stick to Where the Anglers Are
Batey has been a supporter of BASS and FLW since 1998. In recent years, health has kept him off the water yet he still has his finger on the pulse of bass fishing in the Pacific Northwest and the west in general.
“I don’t blame the anglers at all for the low turnouts,” he said. “Let’s start with FLW. They’re giving a lot of misinformation to the anglers. For example, the last event we had here on the Columbia River, FLW wouldn’t tell the anglers how many were signed up for the event. Guys knew there wouldn’t be very much participation due to the drive (1,000 miles from Los Angeles or Las Vegas) and they didn’t want to drop a $4,000 entry fee plus another $2,000 in expenses not knowing how big the field was. The guys are looking at the odds when they aren’t going to pay down that far.
“The second thing that contributed to the failure of that event was FLW got some bad info on when and where to hold the tournament,” he said. “First off, Umatilla is about as po-dunk a town as there is and they also decided to fish the river at the worst possible time there is.
“I talked with FLW and they weren’t receptive at all on how they could make this tournament better,” he said. “If they would have held it in the Tri-Cities in April or May or even in the fall they would have easily filled the field.
“This isn’t the east where everyone bass fishes,” he added. “In a nutshell, what these organizations need to do is talk to some of the respectable anglers out here so they can get a feel for when and where to go.
“For example, 80 percent of the anglers in the west are in California. The other thing about California is it’s central to the entire west. No matter where they go there, it’s not much more than a 10-hour drive from any direction.
“Really it’s pretty simple,” he noted. “Hold tournaments at Clear Lake or the Delta in the spring months and maybe Shasta in the fall. With a schedule like that you’ll fill every tournament.
“If the organizations would just talk and listen to the anglers out here they’d be a lot more successful than they have in the past,” he said. “Of course the anglers that are fully sponsored don’t care when or where a tournament is held but there aren’t as many of those guys out here as there are in the east. Until these organizations start paying attention to what the anglers out here want, they will have a hard time succeeding.”
In the next installment, Ron Colby gives his opinion on why large-scale tournaments are failing in the west.