An interesting year in the making. I've been looking at the schedules with the mind to fish 1 or 2 in nor-cal. Here's the options, as of today at least. Nor-Cal bass just canceled their stuff and FLW is not doing the Stren this year:

FLW Series - $2,000 entry
Jan. 13-16 - Shasta
May 5-8 - Mead
June 9-12 Delta
Sept 22-25 Roosevelt

WON Bass - $500 entry (assumed)
Jan. 9-10 - Shasta
Mar. 6-7 - Delta
Apr. 10-11 - Clear Lake

Angler's Choice - $400 entry
Feb. 27-28 - Oroville
Mar. 27-28 - Shasta
May 15-16 - Clear Lake
Sep. 11-12 - Delta

Only thing I would comment on is: If your going to do this, jump in head first. Fish the whole circuit whatever one you choose.

I have been wanting to fish the WON or AC Pro-Ams because of the shared weight format. Are you thinking of fish as a Pro or an Am?

Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have-yous

Realistically I can only fish 1 or 2. Nico and I are fishing teams for WON motherlode and fishing a whole circuit would be too much time away from home right now. Maybe the next year Nico will get a bigger boat too and we can both go do a pro/am circuit or something.

Lake, I do think you should come join me for one though. How about the WON Clear Lake in April. Should be good fishing and with no Strens I think there's a good chance it will draw well. Dunno who will replace Hutch as TD, and I don't know about what WON has going in terms of a boat deal, but even if they pay cash so what. WON has every opportunity right now to capitalize on the FLW situation and build their fields back to how it used to be.

Sacto John, if I go I'll fish pro side. I don't consider myself a pro fisherman by a long shot but I do have a real boat now and could probably find $500 to gamble on fishing :)

I spoke to Zadain a few weeks back and told him I am doing everything I can to fish the NG next year. I really like the schedule as i have experience on all these lakes. I am doing everything I can to get out of debt and make things happen. I have even been looking for a night job for a couple months now to put things together. I totally dont believe in fishing 1 event. I prefer to jump in head first and see how everything looks at the end of the year. I would imagine WON will add 1 more event to there schedule right? Right now I am only committed to fishing the TBF events and thats only 5 events, so i have some room to play. i want it bad, just need to get the cash thing put together. We will talk more offline in the near future

I figured you were going to fish as a Pro with your new shiny boat :+ I think we should get a whole Calfishing contingent to fish one event, have a get together after day one weigh in...put names with faces

Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have-yous

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.

Actually my thoughts on prefishing has changed drastically since we fished teams. I now belive prefish is huge. The way I prefish is I almost always have a game plan I plan to do for an event. If I only have a day or 2 to prefish I do everything other then what i plan to do and where. I have found it gives me a sense of whats going on and if I figure something out I have a back up plan.

I couldnt agree with you more on the amount of prefish in fishing the NG. Its a must to fish the day after cut off until the event. Like Sat-Tuesday.

I have thoughts about WON, the thing I have noticed is you pretty much have to be in the top 3 or 5 to make enough money to pay for the trip. At least thats what I recall.

All good points and a lot more to think about. Wish i was still single and still had a lot of cash. It would make all this so much easier.

OK now you got me interested. Let's talk about the dreaded subject of tournamet payouts.

Let's do clear lake and delta only and compare NG v. WON v. AC. Let's add a reasonable amount of expenses. We'll go back a few years so that the size of the field is averaged out. We don't know what the field sizes will be for next year but there's been big fields and small fields in the last 4 years so it's not a terrible estimate. Since we don't know how many people got in the options and what the exact payback percentages are and such, this is just a basic way to compare.

Let's look at 2 things

1. The percentage of people who made their money back after a reasonable amount of expenses
2. The ratio of your entry fee to the 1st place prize money

Here's some calculations to see what percentage of the field made their money back. The first number is the number of guys who broke even or better. The second number is the field size. The third number is the percentage of guys who broke even or better.

NG - I'll assume anyone who made a top 50 check (8 to 10k) made their money back.
2009 Clear Lake - 29/89 - 32.6%
2008 Delta - 50/191 - 26.1%
2007 Clear Lake - 50/196 - 25.5%

Avg - 28.1%

AC - I'll assume anyone who made $1,000 made their money back
2009 Clear Lake - 11/68 - 16.2%
2007 Delta - 9/81 - 11.1%
2006 Delta - 15/76 - 19.7

Avg = 15.6%

WON - I'll assume anyone who made $1,000 made their money back.
2008 Clear Lake - 14/137 - 10.2%
2007 Clear Lake - 11/111 - 9.9%
2006 Clear Lake - 11/76 - 14.5%

Avg = 11.3%

Now let's take those same events and look at a ratio of entry fee to 1st place prize. When a boat is the first prize it gets squirrely right :) but let's just say the cert could get you $23,000

NG
2009 Clear Lake - 105000/4400 - 23.8
2008 Delta - 125000/4000 - 31.25
2007 Clear Lake - 125000/4000 - 31.25

Avg = 28.76

AC
2009 Clear Lake - 11675/400 - 29.18
2007 Clear Lake - 23000/400 - 57.5
2006 Delta - 23000/400 - 57.5

Avg = 48.06

WON
2008 Clear Lake - 23000/500 - 46.0
2007 Clear Lake - 24,500/500 - 49.0
2006 Clear Lake - 21,080/500 - 42.16

Avg = 49.55

What have we learned here team?

If you are interested in making your money back, FLW is your best odds. If you want to get a fat payback for first place relative to your entry fee, WON and AC should be your choice. Sure there's gray area and my numbers above are not some perfect accumulation of all the data, but that's the gist of it.

The funny thing about tournament fisherman mentality is that when we're in the truck driving home at the end of the last day we always want whatever portion of the payback we got to be higher. If we win, we want 1st place to be worth more. If we make the last check, we want the last check to be bigger. If we were just out of the money, we wish the event paid further down in to the field. If we were no where close to a check, we wish there was some luck option and that we'd won it.

True??? I think it is. The org's try to serve this thing up every which way, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Quick, someone yell at me and tell me I didn't take the TOC in to consideration :P

I was planning on stepping up as a co and fishing a Stren event or two this year. Now there is just NG. Problem with the NG events is the time off work, I would be looking at 4-5 days off per event vs Won with no days off.....Then there is the whole Shared vs Non shared wieght issue. Right now I am leaning towards fishing the NG Shasta and Delta events just for the experience of fishing as a co at this level.

Lake, you should take the plunge and go for it!

To fish is to live!

heres my 2 cents.....

I hate the won bass events soley based on the shared weight. (everything else is great). I cant stand to see someone win without catching every fish for themselves..........

I fished Anglers Choice pro-ams back when they first came out in the late 90's. They were cool tournaments back then, but I fished as a co angler in those........seem to remember a decent payout!!

last year, the National Guard was way worth it. I had roughly 19,000 dollars invested for the 4 events, and walked away with almost 26 grand. And I only got 2 checks. your just gambling with higher stakes to make a bigger profit. now that they lowered the entry, there is not as much profit to be made. just thinking of the last place check being 5,000 with a full field and you have roughly 3,000 invested......thats only 2 grand profit. And they cut the top 10 to the top 5 on the last day. less opportunity for tv time!! the changes were necesary, but I dont know how much they will help. I plan on fishing them again next year with hopes to do the tour in 2011. I am going to try and rally some sponsor $ to try and do it in 2010, but the chances are slim to none.

I will say this...I have fished all 3 circuts and the National Guard runs the best shows!!!!!even better then BASS.

hope to see all of you next year at the NG events
cam

Thanks for the post Cam. I have a lot of respect for the dudes like you and Zorro who put up the big money and live life on the edge to dream the dream. I will be rooting for you big time at the Forrest Wood Cup!

The shared weight Pro/Ams do make for some amusing results on the co-angler side. The only pro/am I ever fished as a Pro, my AAA actually won the tournament. He was a real nice guy and we had a good time together but he was a total rookie and spent most of the day retying his stuff. He drew a guy who caught 30lbs the 2nd day. Was that lame, yeah kinda.

I guess I just feel like the AAA's real job is to keep people from cheating. If it wasn't for the cheating issue they wouldn't be part of the deal. Since people do cheat and the orgs have to do something about it, the AAA thing is one way to handle it. In the end it doesn't bother me too much if a AAA like my guy wins on the AAA side. All the other AAA's knew the deal going in, and I'd rather have that AAA unfairness issue to deal with than worrying about someone cheating.

That is true about the Am getting a free ride due to the pro catching all the fish, but I fished a Won Shasta event year before last where a local Am caught all the keepers and the pro made out good from it.....Shared wieght, this is just part of the game.

To fish is to live!