Tournament postponements and cancellations are tough to stomach but easy to understand. We want titles and trophies to be earned on the playing field, and we love to see the anglers adjust to conditions, but no one wants the conditions to be the only story – and we certainly don’t want to see injuries or deaths. At this level of the game, the anglers are generally skilled boat drivers, but the need to go just a little bit further or a little bit faster creates some moral hazards.
The delays may prey upon the anglers’ mental health. While a day off provides time to tighten bolts, study maps, rig up lures and possibly catch up on sleep or business, it also allows minds to wander. Fish can move, areas can get muddy, and many other things can change, so that even if they get to fish the remainder of the event it’s not the same event that it would have been with bluebird skies.
In this case, with the St. Lawrence tournament next week, it also condenses practice for that one, changing the dynamic in a tournament that for all we know could experience Chamber of Commerce conditions from start to finish.
The First Cancellation – One of my favorite schedule-alteration stories comes from Shaw Grigsby, whose first Bassmaster win of nine came at the 1988 Texas Invitational at Sam Rayburn. Looking at the standings, his winning weight of 35 pounds 13 ounces appears paltry, especially by Rayburn standards. It’s a little more understandable when you learn that the third and final day was canceled for the first time in B.A.S.S. history. The young Florida pro certainly needed the cash, but winning without having to close it out (he had a 4-pound lead going into the final day) was a little bit like kissing your sister. So what did he do? He went fishing. His hesitant partner saw the 5-footers in the protected marina and thought he was crazy, but decided to go along anyway. “We cut across the cove to one of my backup spots,” Grigsby wrote in his autobiography. “On the second bush I cast on, I caught a 2 ½ pounder. And I knew I could have caught the limit that day. So I came in and accepted the win.”
When Must the Show Go On – Several times we’ve been on the precipice of a Day 3 Bassmaster Classic tie. Since no one would consider dual champs, that would put the organization in sort of a pickle. Do you go out for a Sunday fish-off? That might be complicated by being an hour or so from the lake and considering waning daylight. On the other hand, postponing the finals to Monday would incur substantial costs and might preclude the tens of thousands of fans from staying. Fortunately, it hasn’t come to that yet, but there have been several times when cancellation of Day 1 or Day 2 seemed possible. One was at Lake Hartwell when single-digit temps had boats frozen to the trailers, but we knew that things would eventually thaw out. A more likely possibility occurred at the Louisiana Delta in 2011. A thick fog set in on the launch site and surrounding waters and there were times when we couldn’t see across the launch cove. With little wind or sun, it threatened to sit there all day. Several competitors worked with their electronics sponsors to rig up radar units to run through any fog, much to the dismay of their observers (one later told me that after an E-Ticket ride he would’ve been happy to have been dropped off deep in the Delta to take his chances hitching a ride back rather than flying through the fog at 70mph again). Eventually, the tournament director deemed it safe to go, but by that point, it was late in the morning. Making the 2-hour run to Venice became prohibitively time-consuming. While the tournament likely would have been won in Cataouatche anyway, the delay may have shuffled the deck as to who stayed there and possibly impacted the efforts of others.
Groundhog Day – The most painful delay I can recall in Elite Series history took place at the 2014 Angler of the Year Championship in 2014 when the 50 qualifiers had multiple days to experience all of the off-the-water tourist attractions that Escanaba has to offer. Greg Hackney entered leading the AOY race and looked to seal the deal, while many others were jockeying for spots in the 2015 Classic at Hartwell. In the end, there were two competition days and three cancellations. Hackney may have lost the battle (Jacob Powroznik won the tournament) but he won the war in terms of the AOY title. There was no tournament on the heels of that one, nor were there the trappings of a Classic to consider (and Escanaba is not a particularly expensive place to stay), so I can only wonder how many days the organization would’ve kept postponing before finally just taking their ball and heading home.
