Hey, I know you can Google the answers to questions about everything from diet supplements to World Peace. But sometimes you may just have a plane ol’ bass fishing question. Here’s the place to ask yours, and somehow, someway, that KramerGoneFishing (KGF) will try and come up with a decent answer.
2 Responses to “Ask KGF”
John: Of course, you have hit the key component. We are the “small market” team when it comes to all bass fishing related products. Trout fishermen still outnumber bass guys in California, and pleasure boats and saltwater boats easily outnumber bass boat sales.
Opinions about the West have additional roots. Remember, it’s not always what they say, but why they say it that matters most.
Bass fishing organizations have been burned, multiple times, by the vocal but under-participating West. While organizations have tried to compensate for our smaller pool of tournament players by adjusting what constitutes “full fields” or otherwise limiting championship qualifiers from the region to match (by percentage) those in other parts of the country, that effort has been met with resentment.
There is a widespread belief that the West should not get a pass when the competition is deeper (not necessarily better, we might say) in the South and Midwest.
Also, there is a rooted bias that the South still “owns” bass fishing and that westerners were more involved as novelty players (like the Japanese to a degree)–until the top western emigrants began to bump those guys out of their “chosen” Classic spots.
Since the West has not (or cannot) muster enough players to fill a major circuit, the East (as voiced by its competitors) is in a stronger position to oppose coming back. With travel costs (and for some, “strange” lakes) also a factor, the East quite appropriately says, “Show me.”
Show me you can stand on your own as a tournament-worthy region. Then, when sponsors feel the ground is ready and organizations feel they have enough influence over “their” fishermen, then you might see a return of pro fishing in the West.
As for the demise of OHI, the surprise is not that they shut it down; it’s that they could not see it was doomed to fail.
Since the OHI decision not to do a tournament circuit there has been a lot on the forums about the election and that the bass fishermen of the world dislike Californians. It seems pretty stupid. I came to your site looking for Kramers perspective. It seems to me that if Californian’s buy boats, motors and tackle, and if enough guys fished tournaments that sponsors would want to be involved here as much as anywhere else. Companies care about sales and I doubt they really dislike good customers. My guess is our sales are not as good as these other areas for some national sponsors, and that is why they think we are hard to figure out.