SHREVEPORT, La. – Three of Michigan’s own will fish for a share of $800,000 at the Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship presented by Castrol Sept. 11-14 on Cross Lake near Shreveport, La.
Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Kevin Vida of Clare and Kim Stricker of Howell will represent the Wolverine State in a field of 48 Pro Division anglers.
Chevy pro VanDam qualified as the No. 2 seed and will fish head-to-head against No. 47 seed Marty Stone of Linden, N.C., for the first two days of competition. The angler with the heaviest weight will advance to the semifinal round of 24 anglers. VanDam, who has been called the Tiger Woods of professional bass fishing, had two top-five finishes in 2002, including a second-place effort on Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita in March and a third-place effort on Tennessee’s Old Hickory Lake in May. The 2001 Land O’Lakes Angler of the Year is making his second championship appearance. VanDam has career earnings in excess of $284,000. Stone, a six-year veteran of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, had his best finish of 2002 on Lake Okeechobee near Clewiston, Fla., in January with a 27th-place finish. Stone has finished in the top 10 in eight Wal-Mart FLW Tour stops since 1997 and is making his fourth championship appearance. Stone’s earnings via the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the EverStart Series, the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League and the Ranger M1 exceed $206,000.
No. 23 seed Vida will compete against the No. 26 seed, Kellogg’s pro Jim Tutt of Longview, Texas, on days one and two. Vida put together two top-20 finishes in 2002. Only his 12th-place finish at the Forrest Wood Open on New York’s Lake Champlain in June bested a 20th-place effort on Lake Ouachita. An accomplished angler on the EverStart Series and Wal-Mart BFL circuits, Vida is making his first Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship appearance. After posting an eighth-place finish at the season opener on Lake Okeechobee, Tutt finished in the top 20 on Lake Ouachita and in the top 30 on Old Hickory Lake. Tutt won back-to-back BFL Cowboy Division titles in 1996 and 1997. He has earned more than $200,000 via the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the EverStart Series, the BFL and the Texas Tournament Trail. This is his second championship appearance.
Stricker, the No. 39 seed, will fish against No. 10 seed Greg Hackney of Oak Ridge, La., the first two days. Stricker, a veteran of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, finished 15th at the Forrest Wood Open on Lake Champlain in June. He has career earnings totaling $74,500 via the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and the Ranger M1 and is making his first championship appearance. Hackney fished his way into the top 20 at two FLW Tour stops in 2002, including a 12th-place effort on Lake Ouachita and an 18th-place showing at the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake near Rogers, Ark., in April. The former Wal-Mart BFL Arkie Division Champion has career earnings in excess of $136,000 via the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the EverStart Series, the BFL and the Ranger M1. This is his first championship appearance.
This year’s Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship features a setup unlike any bass-fishing championship in the history of the sport. The 48 pros who qualified based on their year-end point total will be seeded so fishing fans can keep up with their favorite anglers in a bracket-style competition similar to the NCAA basketball playoffs. The No. 1 seed will fish head-to-head against the No. 48 seed; the No. 2 seed will compete against the No. 47 seed and so on.
The top 48 pros will fish for a combined two-day weight to eliminate half the field for the semifinal round on day three. The 24 semifinalists will continue in head-to-head competition on day three, after which the field will be cut to 12 finalists.
On day four, the remaining 12 anglers will be reseeded according to their total weight from the first three days of competition. Anglers seeded No. 1 and No. 2 will compete for the first- and second-place cash awards of $260,000 and $55,000. The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will compete for third- and fourth-place money of $34,500 and $29,000, and so on. The pro who finishes last in the no-entry-fee championship will take $2,000.
Co-angler competition will end on day three. A full field of 48 co-anglers will fish for a combined two-day weight to advance to the 24-slot final round. Weights are then cleared, with the weight on day three determining the Co-angler Division champion, who will collect $25,000 cash. The co-angler finishing 48th will receive $500.
Named after Ranger Boats founder, Forrest L. Wood, the Wal-Mart FLW Tour is run by FLW Outdoors, the world’s leading marketer of competitive fishing tournaments. Wal-Mart signed on as title sponsor of the FLW Tour in 1996 and has since expanded its sponsorship of FLW Outdoors’ fishing tournaments to include the EverStart Series, Wal-Mart BFL, Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail, Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Circuit and Ranger M1. FLW Outdoors will award anglers as much as $22 million in 2002 through 170 tournaments nationwide.