SHREVEPORT, La. – Two of Tennessee’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.
Fujifilm’s Wesley Strader of Spring City and Craig Powers of Rockwood will represent the Volunteer State in a field of 48 Pro Division anglers.
Strader qualified as the No. 15 seed and will fish head-to-head against No. 34 seed Brent Chapman of Shawnee, Kan., for the first two days of competition. The angler with the heaviest weight will advance to the semifinal round of 24 anglers.
Strader earned his first Wal-Mart FLW Tour victory in 2002 with a win on Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita in March. He also put together a ninth-place effort on Alabama’s Wheeler Lake in February. Strader, who has also had a successful career in the EverStart Series and the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League, has career earnings exceeding $294,000 through the FLW Tour, the EverStart Series, the BFL, the Ranger M1 and the Texas Tournament Trail. This is his fourth championship appearance. Chapman finished in the top 25 twice in 2002, including a 21st-place effort on Wheeler Lake in February and an 18th-place finish on Tennessee’s Old Hickory Lake in May. In three years on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, Chapman has earned more than $30,000. This is his first championship appearance.
No. 36 seed Powers will face the No. 13 seed, Yamaha pro Alton Jones of Waco, Texas, during days one and two. Powers earned his championship berth with finishes like his third-place effort on Lake Ouachita in March. He has six top-10 tournament finishes in his four-year Wal-Mart FLW Tour career. The 1996 Wal-Mart BFL Choo Choo Division Champion has career earnings of more than $302,000 through the FLW Tour, the EverStart Series and the BFL. This is his fourth championship appearance. Jones had a solid season in 2002, fishing himself to a third-place finish on Wheeler Lake in February and an 11th-place spot at the Forrest Wood Open on New York’s Lake Champlain in June. Jones has earned more than $76,000 in three seasons on the FLW Tour and is making his second 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.