Sacto John - I like your thinking. I'll revisit this next year for sure if I can put something together to fish an event or two :)

Lake - Dude you've given me a lot of good advice over the years which I value a lot. On the one hand I think it's awesome you want to go full bore and fish the NG. Obviously the Roosevelt tourney has your eye with your AZ roots :)

I just think there's a lot more to it than being able to find the cash for the entry fee. And what I mean by that is pre-fishing. I know your style is no-prefish, and we had some success with that method 10 years ago when we fished those team circuits.

But at the NG level.. phew. I could just see a bad situation where you get in the event, maybe practice 1 weekend or for a few days before the event, then wind up frustrated afterward that you didn't have the time to get that little bit of extra practice in. The little bit of practice that put you in the money.

It's one thing when you lose $200 as a result. It's another when you add a zero and a comma.

Here's another way to look at it. At current gas prices, if you fish the Roosevelt event, you're looking at:

$500 - truck gas from Milpitas (855 miles each way)
$300 - boat gas if you only burn $50 a day for 6 days
$135 - motel 6 in AZ split 2 ways
$70 - boat oil, figuring you burn 2 tanks
$60 - figure $10 to launch every day
$2,000 - entry

$3,065 - total. which is pretty conservative

I didn't count food or tackle because you're going to buy it anyway.

My reasoning is that if you're going to fish that one event, why not have a go at the full WON season and practice every other weekend before each event for 2 months? WON is very likely to add a 4th event. It'll be 3, and there won't be a Western Classic unless something really changes up.

If you set up with good prefish before the events and a smaller $ commitment, don't you think you'll be in a much better position to be successful? And if it's a prestige thing, I don't think you have to look too far down the list of past WON Bass winners to see the biggest names in the sport.

http://www.wonbass.com/pro/stats/honor_roll.html

I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying - put yourself in a position to be successful, so at the end of the final day of the event you can feel like you at least gave yourself the opportunity to do well.

PS. I think Zaldain's new nickname should be Zorro.