Laney Says Top Gun A Success, Goals Met

Slice it any way you like, the Cabela's Top Gun Championship was a risk. No entry fees, a field of

25 (actually 24) and a unique "no fish" weigh-in show? It was all there.

Then there was the industry risk. Was there room for another championship? Would FLW Outdoors or BASS suddenly view BassFan, a media property, as competition?

Now that Top Gun is said and done, BassFan COO Scot Laney – who helped spearhead the Top Gun Championship – sat down to answer questions about the event itself, and whether it will occur again in the future.

BassFan: Now that Top Gun is over, what's your take on the event? Was it a success?

Laney: Yeah, we thought it was a great success. Our goal was to have an event that was in some respects sort of a throwback event to what bass fishing at the highest level was. There was less pressure, and more a sense of camaraderie amongst the anglers. While at the same time, it incorporated some new thought processes we think are important, like no entry fees.

Is it something you want to do again?

Absolutely. We will do it again. We're working hard right now to get a date locked in for 2006. Our sponsors indicated to us that they were happy with the event, so we're hopeful that we'll have our same partners back again.

So a 2006 Top Gun is pending sponsor support?

Everything's always pending the economics of the sport. But the biggest challenge we have right now is not with sponsorship. It's with timing. The (tour) schedules are so expansive next year.

Do you have a newfound respect for tournament organizations, considering the logistics it takes to stage a tournament and full-scale weigh-in?

I don't have a newfound respect. I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for the capabilities of BASS and FLW Outdoors, not to mention organizations like Bass Champs and others that do this every day. These things are hard.

Let's talk about emcee Fish Fishburne for a minute. The crowd seemed to react well to him, and the anglers too. Do you feel he did a good job at Top Gun?

Fish did a great job on Top Gun. We knew he would. That's why we hired him. In the whole universe of guys who can do that job, there's probably five guys walking God's green earth who can do it and do it well. Fish is obviously one of them – I feel one of the better talents in bass fishing.

And we knew that we had the potential for a very challenging scenario – the way we did our scenario with no fish. We had to be careful we got the guy who could pull that off. We did, and he did a great job.

The overall turnout – was it what you expected, or a little light?

It was actually better than we expected. With this event, you just have to do the first event, and our expectations were maybe no one would come. On the last night, we pretty well packed the area, in very tough weather, and it was great.

It was nice this year that we didn't have to have a crowd management or traffic component to what we did. Next year we're going to have to.

Do you have any final attendance figures?

According to the Cabela's folks, who did the crowd counts, overall, through the whole championship week, we pushed about 18,000 people total.

At least one reader reported watching Mike Iaconelli throw his fish pretty far when he released them. Was this investigated as unsportsmanlike behavior?

I didn't hear anything about it during the event. We investigated everything we did hear about, and actually came close to disqualifying a guy based on attitude.

What happened?

Well, we're not going to allow any blue language in our events. We're very specific about that. But there's a certain mindset with some anglers that you have to push those limits now. That's a street issue for me. It's a zero-tolerance issue for me.

At one point, during the final-day weigh-in, just in my area, I could count over 100 children. And I'm off in the corner. So there's just no way that BassFan is going to be part of that. That's a different business plan than we have.

Which angler are you referring to?

Because I've known that angler for many, many, many years, and I know that this particular angler might have been a little road weary and got outside his normal thought process, I'm going to not disclose who that was. But if we have another event, and it continues to be a problem, everyone will know who he is. He came so close to the limit that, if he puffed, he would have went over the limit.

A notable comment from the field was the busy schedule at Top Gun. Do you feel the activities should have been scaled back to let anglers better focus on sleep and fishing?

Our original thought process was first the fishing, then an extended break, then the weigh-in show. Some anglers really liked that, and some didn't. I think a better way to do it next time is we'll just start a little later in the morning, and continue right into weigh-in without the break.

The event will be broadcast on the Outdoor Life Network. Did you create the event with TV in mind, or was TV more of an afterthought?

We created the event first for the fans that were there, and television allows us to bring that to a wider audience. But there was nothing in our event that television dictated. What you see is what you get with the anglers – no promotion, no scripting. There was no unspoken expectation, other than, the only thing we told them is, we definitely will not air them if we have to use the bleeper. That was the only rule we had.

At least one angler seemed like he didn't want to be there. Did you get that feeling from the field? And with more events next year, anglers might be even more burned out after a long season.

The overwhelming message we received from the anglers was that they had fun, that it was worthwhile, and they appreciated us putting it on. You'll always have, in the modern era of bas fishing, always one or two guys who feel the need to do some posturing. In my mind, that's all that was.

The live-release rate was impressive for an August tournament – close to 100%. Do you see other tournament organizations moving toward a system like that used at Top Gun?

I wish they would. What we did, you could argue might not be necessary in colder-water environments. Nevertheless, common sense says that the less caging that occurs with these fish, the better it is for them, regardless of where or when a tournament is. If you can utilize that resource for what you need, which is the weight, then return that resource to the lake, that should be the number-one goal of any tournament organization.

What was the final release data?

We had 537 fish caught, two fish dead and zero fish that died in our care. The two dead fish came in dead.

Since Top Gun was successful in your eyes, does this signify a larger plan?

Right now, no. But it's really difficult to say. There's so many changes in fishing right now, it's hard to predict the future.

About the future, it was printed in the paper that Dave Lefebre announced next year's Top Gun will take place at Union City, Pa. Is that true?

He made that joke on the stage with Fish, and Ray Sasser from the Dallas paper printed it as fact. That was pretty funny. If you listen closely, that's Dave's hometown. I'm not even certain if there's a bass fishery in that town. Nevertheless, that did get picked up by at least one newspaper. I'll have to admit, that particular location hasn't really crossed our radar screen.

The bottom line is, the people in that (Dallas and Ft. Worth) area are just great. The fans there are great. They know about bass fishing and the area really offers everything an event like this needs. You really get the benefit of the first tournament when you return the second year. We would love to have it right there again.

Notable

> The Cabela's Top Gun Championship telecast will air Saturday, Sept. 24 at 10:00 a.m. EST on the Outdoor Life Network.