The Cabela's Top Gun Championship is the only real world championship in professional bass fishing.

Why? It is the only tournament in the world that only the world's best professional anglers are eligible to fish.  

The Top 25 anglers in the world according to the State Farm World Rankings after the 2005 Bassmaster and FLW tour seasons will qualify, along with the 2005 tour Anglers of the Year if they are not already in the Top 25 in the world.

That's it. You're that good or you don't make it. If an angler in the Top 25 can't attend and the field is less than 25 anglers, BassFan will only go down as far as 30th in the world to fill a field of 25.

This is significantly different than the Bassmaster Classic and the FLW Tour Championship. While both those championships are big and important, they do not field the best anglers in the world - as determined by performance alone.

• The Classic is really a BASS members championship: everyone from weekend anglers to AAA (Open) anglers to Tour anglers to top money-winners (Elite 50s) can qualify. It does not field the world's best professional tour-level anglers.

• The FLW Tour Championship does field only the best anglers from the FLW Tour, but it obviously excludes anglers who only fish the Bassmaster Tour.

The State Farm World Rankings rank top professional anglers from both major tours: the Bassmaster Tour and the FLW Tour. In other words, anglers who fish either one or both tours are ranked. Drawing from this list is the only way to conduct a true championship of the world's top bass-fishing pros.

The Cabela's Top Gun Championship is this event. It is the first and only true Super Bowl-like event in bass fishing in that it pits the best anglers against each other, regardless of whether they come from the "National Football Conference" (BASS) or the "American Football Conference" (FLW Outdoors).

It also has the most exclusive field in the sport. The winner will be crowned the best in the sport...the first true world champion...the Top Gun for 2005.