(Editor's note: The following piece was submitted by veteran FLW Tour co-angler Mark Myers of Cedar Falls, Iowa.)
The End Of An Era
There’s a lot of truth to the common saying that each tournament win is sweeter than the last. I learned that recently at the season-ending FLW Tour event at Lake St. Clair, where I took the co-angler title with over 42 pounds of smallmouths from the rear of the boat in 2 days.
Catching that kind of weight from the back deck (in a smallmouth tournament, no less) are what co-angler dreams are made of – what an incredible fishery! Many thanks are due to FLW for putting on such a great event and to my pro partners Darrel Robertson and Cameron Gautney for putting me around the caliber of fish it took to win such a slugfest.
It had been 10 seasons, countless days on the water, endless tackle-tinkering and a few close calls since my last Tour-level win as a co-angler, and to pull it off on a lake I grew up fishing with my parents in attendance and wife and kids watching on FLW Live will forever be a highlight of my tournament angling career. The significance of the win only deepened the following week when news surfaced that FLW will eliminate co-anglers from the 2019 FLW Tour, and that, in all likelihood, I’ll be the last co-angler to win an FLW Tour event.
I guess the writing had been on the wall for some time now, as evidenced by the gradual reduction in co-angler top-10 payouts, the elimination of co-anglers from the Forest Wood Cup, increasingly restrictive rules about when co-anglers could cast in Tour events, and B.A.S.S.' move to marshals. But the news was still a surprise and major disappointment to me and likely many other dedicated FLW co-anglers. FLW’s press release downplayed the impact of the decision by correctly emphasizing that new pathways exist to reach the pro ranks of the FLW Tour and by arguing that the same learning opportunities presented to FLW Tour co-anglers will be retained through the new FLW Tour Marshal Program. To me, however, these rationalizations miss the point entirely of what was special and unique about FLW Tour co-angler events in the bass fishing tournament landscape and why I looked forward to them with such anticipation each year.
The skill set required to be an excellent angler from the back deck is somewhat different from that required of boaters, and I relished the opportunity to compete against other excellent co-anglers in top-notch events with a payout structure that could justify the expense of travel to some of the country’s top fisheries, without the time commitment and monetary expense of an extended “practice.” With an established career and young family, I gave up ambitions of being a full-time touring pro long ago. And while it’s true that I learned a great deal as a co-angler and had some memorable experiences along the way (how about being in the boat with David Dudley as he won Angler of the Year on the last day of the 2008 Tour campaign, having Stacey King deliver a personal seminar in big-worm fishing in the midst of catching a huge sack on Lake Guntersville, or fishing with the likes of Larry Nixon, Andy Morgan, Shinichi Fukae, Jason Christie, Steve Kennedy, and countless other excellent anglers?), this was never my primary motivation, either. While I never felt too bad about leaving an FLW Tour event without cashing a check, make no mistake that my primary objective at each event was to walk away holding a trophy and a big check, just like any other serious competitor on either the boater or co-angler side.
As for the FLW Tour Marshal Program, I’ve never been one to buy raffle tickets at pre-tournament meetings and I don’t see myself participating in such a program, either. A cash prize for the “winning” marshal based on the combined weight of his or her pros at each event? Entry into a raffle for a Ranger boat at season’s end? Great perks, to be sure, but such games of chance have little to do with the legitimate competition and test of skill that Tour-level co-angler competitions represented. And while there may be a lot to be learned from watching someone fish, any serious angler knows that the learning opportunities to be had from passive observation are not equivalent to those derived from active experimentation with a line in the water. Besides, I think my head would explode the first time they came up schooling around me and I found my rod-holder empty.
There is probably no turning back from a move like this. Hopefully the demise of Tour-level co-angler competitions will result in enhanced payouts for co-anglers at the Costa level. If so, I’ll be the first to sign up.
As this chapter ends, I’d like to extend many thanks to FLW for putting on such great events for so many years and to all the Tour pros who shared their back deck with me; it has been a great run with many lasting memories and friendships over the years. While this news signals the end of an era and one set of ambitions, the beauty of fishing is that there will always be other goals to pursue. I guess the pressure is on now to finally get the BFL Regional monkey off my back and to qualify for the All-American.
