Some clubs seem to have all the fun.

Members of a club I belonged to years ago never did seem to have much fun. They were always bickering about the schedule, the pairings, tournament locations and just about everything imaginable. It is no wonder that club eventually disbanded.

If the members had concentrated on ways to put the fun back in fishing, that club would probably still be around today. Adding special tournaments to its schedule is one way a club can create more camaraderie among its members. A club can still have its slate of qualifying tournaments for the competitive anglers, but it can also include optional unique events that liven up the club’s schedule.

Three clubs that have added special tournaments to give members some more fun contests are the Steel City Bassmasters of Illinois, the St. Charles County Hawg Hunters of Missouri and the Winter Haven Lunker Lovers of Florida. Bass Club Digest takes a look at the types of tournaments these clubs have adopted to help recruit new members and give existing members a chance to fish a club event with their family or friends.

Invitationals
The Steel City Bassmasters hold two invitationals at Table Rock Lake each year to renew acquaintances with former members and lure in new recruits. The club allows these anglers to compete in the two tournaments without having to pay membership dues.

“We are just trying to stir up some extra interest in the club and have a big event,” says Larry Heagy, Steel City Bassmasters president. “In these two events we really try to invite people who might be potential new members or past members who could only make a couple of tournaments during the year. We also have members originally from the St. Louis area who are retired and living there, and those are the only tournaments they get in with the club.”

The invitationals are buddy tournaments that also count for points for members in the club’s angler-of-the-year standings. Part of the entry fee for the tournament pays for a catered meal. “On the Friday night before the tournament we bring in a local guide or professional angler to give us a seminar,” says Heagy. “In the past we’ve had (FLW pro) Stacey King and for the last several trips we’ve had (Bassmaster Elite Series competitor) Brian Snowden. The members in our group really enjoy rubbing elbows with them.”

The Table Rock events were regular qualifying events for the members when the club started more than 20 years ago. The long drives to Table Rock made it tough for all the members to make regular tournaments, so the club decided to make two invitationals instead. “We were trying to think of ideas to get more guys involved,” says Heagy. “We had about 25 guys in the club at that point and we just thought that would be a good way to get things going. The guys really look forward to these tournaments now.”

The club holds one invitational in the spring and the other in the fall. The spring invitational usually draws more boats, while the club’s regular qualifying tournaments draw about 25 to 30 boats. Heagy said the most entries the club has drawn came via one of its invitational tourneys.
The invitationals serve as good recruiting tools every year. “A lot members joined as a result of going down to the Table Rock tournament a couple of times and getting to know the guys in our club. Then their situation changes and they are able to fish more often. This year in the spring tournament we picked up five guys who fished with us for the rest of the season,” he said.

Heagy estimates that the club usually averages about five recruits each year as a result of its invitationals.

MegaBucks
St. Charles County Hawg Hunters President Gary Morrison always likes to plan something unique for his club. Three years ago he set up an annual mouse-racing event as a fund-raiser for the club and his latest creation is a MegaBucks format tournament. “I started it by just watching Bassmasters (on television),” says Morrison, which followed the same concept of the Bassmaster MegaBucks tournaments.

“We do a six-hole course, although this year we did a three-hole course with two boats fishing each hole.”

The BASS Federation Nation club holds two MegaBucks events a year in conjunction with regular qualifying events at Mark Twain Lake and Lake of the Ozarks. A regular eight-hour club event is held first. The top five finishing teams and one draw boat return to the water to compete for three hours in the MegaBucks event. The club selects the draw boat by picking a boat number out of a hat. The two special tournaments usually average about 30 boats.

After the weigh-in of the regular tournament, the six teams receive aerial maps of the lake marking the three- or six-hole fishing course. The top finishing team gets to pick the first hole to fish and each team rotates to all the holes during the three-hour tournament. The team weighing in the biggest fish in this winner-take-all event receives $500. While the six teams compete in the three-hour MegaBucks segment, the rest of the club members prepare a dinner that follows the MegaBucks weigh-in.

The three-hole course at the latest MegaBucks tournament at Lake of the Ozarks was laid out in two creeks.

“We want the course to be big enough to include an area which has a deep-water and a shallow-water bite,” says Morrison.

The club president threw his members a curve at the last MegaBucks event, held at Mark Twain. He had them fish a smaller conservation area lake near the Missouri reservoir after the regular eight-hour tournament “That way no one knows what to fish ahead of time,” Morrison explains.

Couples and family tournaments

Every spring the Winter Haven Lunker Lovers hold an annual husband-and-wife tournament for their club members. “It is a special tournament that allows them to enjoy a day on the water together,” says Jack Dixon, president of The Bass Federation (TBF) affiliated club. “We’ve got about four couples who fish it regularly.”

Members have fished with their wives, girl friends and mothers in the four-hour tournament. The special event has no entry fee or prize money as the couples only compete for bragging rights. After the tournament, the contestants usually go out to lunch at a local restaurant. “It’s a fun time just to get together,” says Dixon.

The St. Charles County Hawg Hunters also hold a special tournament at Mark Twain Lake for the club members and their spouses, girl friends, sons or daughters. “The more the merrier,” says Morrison.

The club has been holding this family event for 10 years. Sponsors usually donate cash prizes or gifts so no entry fee is required. The tournament is a combined crappie/bass derby with prizes awarded for the biggest bass and crappie weighed in. “The women normally are crappie fishing and the guys are bass fishing,” says Morrison. “The women (or kids) can use live bait for crappie, but the guys can only use artificial lures for bass.”

If your club members are getting bored with the same old schedule, try adding some of these special tournaments to put more fun back into the club.

St. Charles County Hawg Hunters President Gary Morrison plans on having a tournament for his club at the end of the year that is reminiscent of the first Bassmaster Classic.

For the first Classic, BASS founder Ray Scott kept the location of the Classic a secret and even had the qualifiers board an airplane without revealing where the tournament would be held until they were 10,000 feet in the air. Morrison’s tournament for the Top 20 finishers in the point standings will be at a mystery location.

“I am the one who picks the lake and it will be a small lake that no one has touched,” says Morrison. “I told everybody to fill their trucks up and meet in a parking lot that morning. Then we are all going to drive to a secret lake together.”
 

Copyright 2010 Bass Club Digest.

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