[The Fishing Coach]

The first annual Toyota Texas Bass Classic featuring a $1,000,000 purse to qualifying PAA members, will highlight a unique team concept, including a size-specific live weigh-in for the contest set for April 13-15, 2007 on Lake Fork.

Specially formatted for television coverage by both OLN and CBS, the latter to broadcast on Mothers Day, 2007, the tournament field will be broken into “four-man” teams randomly drawn from among the 160 entrants. The tournament format features two, 4-hour halves of competition each day, where two members of each team will fish the morning or first half, while the other two team members fish the second half, in the boats of their choice.

Sandwiched between the two competitive periods will be a strategy session, also televised, where teams will make adjustments in order to maximize their afternoon catch.

This format will be in operation all three days of the event, however, on the final day, only the five highest scoring teams will still be competing.

The official scoring will be by on-the-water, length measurement, converted into poundage, which will be calculated by a volunteer member of the Texas Parks & Wildlife staff, who will serve as an observer in each boat. And each team will be allowed to tally its 10 “biggest” fish or 10 highest scores per session.

A live weigh-in will also be held for one big bass (over 24 inches in length) by each angler for each half during the first two days of competition in order to showcase this prize fishery developed the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. A Big Bass Champion will be crowned at the end of the first four sessions.

Toyota, with its factory in San Antonio producing the popular and powerful Tundra, is funding the event, making it possible for every contestant to earn a check in the Toyota Texas Bass Classic, without paying any entry fee. The relationship between Toyota and Texas bass fishing is unmistakable, with Toyota being the official vehicle of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.

 

[fish4funinfl]

This is gonna be interesting to watch.

 

[The Fishing Coach]

Yeah, I gotta find the vacation days to fish it!

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I gotta find the vacation days to fish it!

You and me both. I am really going to hit Fork hard this fall just to see what it is about.

A lady that I work with has a husband that fishes Lake Fork ONLY. He said he would take me anytime and he will show me where the big ones are.

 

[imonembad]

Does anyone have any more info on this thing?

 

[Guest]

No doubt. I have not heard about this at all. Sounds pretty cool. The weights should be awesome as April is the tail end of the Spawn there.

 

[Guest]

Found this info on another site:

The televised rights have been bought by CBS, and it no longer will be televised live, but be broadcast on CBS affiliates on Mothers Day in a 1 hour long tape delayed format. It will also be televised by OLN who will actually be filming it, in 3 thirty minute tape delayed airings, shortly afterwards. They are going to have 160 of the top professionals divided into 4 man teams. The 1st 2 members of the team will go out in the AM in the same boat, and then come in, and the second 2 team members will go out in the afternoon. Like a tag team. They will then do the same thing the following 2 days. they will have an official judge assigned to each boat that will measure,weigh and photograph each fishermans catch. There is speculation that the judges will be in the boat with the Pros, and some other talk that they will be in the camera boats or trail boats following the contestants. They are talking about only bringing in fish to the scales if they are over the 24" slot on Fork, but might not bring any fish at all in. They are trying to show 2 primary points in tournament fishing, that major tournaments can be held on slot lakes, and the main thing they are wanting to do, is show that tournaments can be held without any fish mortality's. This is going to take place on one of the nations premier lakes, at the mid to latter stages of the spawn. There will probably be a lot of footage on huge Bass being caught. It is the first tournament like this, and they already have plans to do one in 2008 and 2009. I hope everyone gets a chance to watch it. Like I said in an earlier post, it could possibly change the format on how tournaments are ran, and the way the weigh in is handled. If you are in Texas April 9th - 15th they will have practice days first, then a Pro/Am on the 12th, and the actual tournament starts on the 13th - the 15th. They will be having a huge expo, with a lot of fishing product vendors, with live entertainment, the 2 big headliners are Clay Walker and Tracy Lawrence. They are expecting in excess of 20,000 spectators to attend. It is going to be at the SRA location on 288 in Quitman Texas. Lindale Texas has the host city rights to it. If I hear any more info I will let you know. You can check it out on www.proanglersassociation.com for more info.