fishing tournaments a sport?

Bassmaster tournament starts in La Crosse tomorrow. First prize: 100K. Is fishing a sport?

 

Bassmaster is the big leagues of the fishing world. I've covered a few stops on the circuit. It's not the first thing I would jump on to cover, but on a slow day in a smaller area, it's better than yet another American Legion gamer.

 

It's a competition, which is perhaps a distinction without a difference.

 

We've had a lot of bass tournaments in our area. When it's the big events, like the one you describe with that kind of prize money, we've covered them. Basically, it's go down to the weigh-in when it starts, and interview the top two or three. It's local copy, and the guys are more than happy to talk to you.

When I was interning at my hometown paper when I was in college, there used to be a bass tournament every weekend and of course, I was always stuck covering them. This was back in the day when Red Man or Skoal or some other tobacco brand was sponsoring the events. You would go there, and there would be boxes and boxes of free chewing tobacco for anyone (of age, of course) who wanted it.

A few years ago, a guy in our area won one of these national tournaments. We got the press release, and it stated in there he won $20,000, so we used it in the story. The next day, the guy's wife called up, bitching because we printed how much he won. When I asked why we shouldn't have, she said, "Because we owe money to a couple of businesses in town, and we didn't want them knowing it."

 

As others have noted, on a slow day, it's not a bad thing for a different kind of story. And some of these tournaments offer big enough purses that the number alone might catch some eyes.

It is also usually pretty easy and quick to cover, making it an efficient allocation of resources that will make the "work smarter AND harder" crowd of beancounters happy.

A well-run tournament usually has some official boats out on the water checking up on the participants and they're usually pretty happy to ferry out a photographer for an hour or whatever. If not, a dock shot with the winner is decent enough to break up some gray on an inside page.

It is, obviously, about knowing your audience. If charter fishing and tournament fishing are popular in your area, you might find a lot of readers interested in the results.

And, of course, fishermen love to tell stories, so you can sometimes find a real gem of a story on something you might not usually cover.

 

Fishing is not a sport. But it is totally worth Sports page coverage in an area where you may be hurting for stories this time of year. I wish we had a tournament. All I do is cover 5k runs at this point.

 

Would you rather go to a lake or cover summer softball?

 

Do they measure the fish or do they just have a panel of judges sit there and decide who looked the prettiest catching it?

 

beats the wnba

 

And there's nothing like a "wake you up" kind of ride like in a bass boat ... I've covered a few FLW and Bassmaster high-end events, and doing 40-plus mph in a boat where you are literally sitting inches above the waterline (and watching the pros in their boat pulling away from you because they're doing 50-plus) will get the heart pumping ...

 

Competitive fishing is a sport.

Your regular readers will like it as something different, and you will draw in new readers as well.

 

The 10,637 people at last night's two WNBA games night disagree.