Let’s see here… A new tournament chain? So, this one I didn’t know about. I actually saw it on Facebook. David Chong, again, he posted this actually. I’ve never heard of these guys before. They’re called National Professional Fishing League. Never heard of them.
National Professional Fishing League. Apparently, it’s been on Ike Live and it’s been on Wired2fish, which is interesting, because I’ve been on Wired2fish like I go on there quite a bit to kinda look for stuff to talk about and I never saw it. So, I don’t know if it was a big thing that they did or just something small like an article or something that they did.
But what they’re doing is pretty cool, actually, because if you listened to Erik talk last week, he talked about, you know, tournament fishermen having to throw like $40,000 in entry fees to fish a circuit. With these guys, what they’re saying is, their goal is to make a lucrative endeavor for those professionals who also hold down full-time jobs. The schedule will not conflict with bass opens. So, they’re offering you another tournament train.
It’s not expensive to fish, it doesn’t impact any of the bass trails, so you can still fish your BASS tournaments, but you get an option now to maybe make a little bit of money doing something you love.
So, just the specs on these guys. 125 angler field… Now, you do have to have a two-year contract, but this also includes an option for a third year. Now, they didn’t say, you now, if the option is just, you know, at a lower discount or whatever it is, but you do have an option for a third year when you sign up for the two-year. There’s no real qualification for the first three years. And again, I don’t know a lot about tournaments, but with them saying that, it kind of sounds like… You know, other tournament trails you have to qualify every year to be able to fish on those tournament trails. Could be completely wrong, but that’s what I’m reading here.
There’s six qualifying tournaments, two in the spring, two in the summer, and two in the fall. So, when you first qualify, those are the three times that you can qualify. It’s only $5,000 entry fee per event. Now, I didn’t’ go through it to see how many tournaments they are actually fishing, so if you wanted to fish all of them, yeah, it’d probably get pretty close to the same amount of money as you probably would for a pro circuit. But, you know, you get to pick and choose, right? You don’t have to fish the whole entire circuit.
Now, they also have a no entry national championship. Excuse me, a no entry fee national championship. Which is pretty cool. So, their championship, you don’t have to pay to get in and fish that championship.
So, they livestream all three days. So, when you go to fish the tournament, they are livestreaming all three days. On the water, by the way. They’re gonna have a live in-studio commentator and live weigh-ins just like any other bass tournament. The trailered weigh-ins that they’re gonna have are basically, you don’t have to unpack your fish, put them in bags and stuff like that, carry them up… You know, we’re getting rid of all that. They stay in the boat, you trailer your boat, and they pull the boat around. Kinda like what you see at BASS tournaments, which is very cool. I like that.
And then they’re gonna have an angler committee comprised of active anglers, and those anglers will liaison directly with the ownership group and the tournament director. So, it’s very cool. It sounds like it’s a very, you know, close knit group of people that are trying to just bring, I guess, you know, tournaments back to kinda like clubby events, right, but on a bigger scale, which is pretty cool.
So, this was just another option. I mean, you still have bass opens. I’m not familiar with the US stuff. My buddy, BassGeek, he would know for sure. He’s got some videos, actually, because he does that. But, yeah, I don’t know what to say on how those… but I’m pretty sure they’re just called BASS Opens or BFLs or something like that.
So, check it out.
So, for qualifying events, they do a payout here and it looks like… So, from first place is $50,000, second is $30,000, third is $20,000, fourth is $15,000, fifth is $14,000, and then sixth to twenty-fifth, you’re getting $10,000 and then twenty-sixth to forty-fourth, you’re getting $9,000. So, that’s pretty cool. I mean, if you hit all the way down to forty-fourth, you’re getting a payout, right? So, if you paid, you know, $5,000 to get into this particular tournament, you get anywhere, you know, from one to 44, you’re making your money back and you’re actually gaining a few bucks too, right? Yeah, so, you’re getting $4,000.
Now, I didn’t notice if these guys have pairs, so I don’t know if they’re gonna have a co-angler and an angler. If it does, then that’s probably gonna change that payout a little bit because you’re gonna have to split it, so you might short out 500 bucks maybe, so...
If you look at the championship, it’s gonna be the top 25 in points gets to fish the championship. And then, again, they pay all the way down it looks like to twenty-fifth, a little bit less than. So, you’re still in the first, second, and third, I think it is. Yeah, first, second, and third you’re still getting that $50,000, #$30,000, $20,000. But now they’ve changed it so in fourth, instead of $15,000, you’re getting $18,000. And then from fifth on down it kinda goes down from there. So, you’re getting $14,000, $12,000, $10,000, $8,000, $7,000, $6,000 and then $5,000 for anyone from 11 to twenty-fifth.
So, that’s pretty cool.
If you are an American fisherman, if you happen to be watching this and you’re looking for something new to do, you want to give it a go, they’re actively recruiting people right now. So, you go hit their website. You’ll see a video there. I think Paul is one of the owners. He’s got a video on there basically describing kind of what they’re looking for. You throw a resume their way. And he even said in it, ‘Look, if you don’t think you’re good enough, we don’t care, throw the resume in. We’ll tell you if you’re gonna fish the event.’ And then if not, so be it. You know? At least you tried. You don’t lose anything. So, give it a go.