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What's Next? Fantasy Fishing Will Reel You In

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By FRANK SARGEANT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 19, 2007

Updated: 12/18/2007 11:57 pm

OK, so maybe you can't outfish Kevin Van Dam, Larry Nixon or Shaw Grigsby (You couldn't tackle Earnest Graham, either). For those who can't get enough of real fishing, we stand on the verge of what may be a precipice, the advent of "fantasy fishing."

Of course, fantasy sports leagues have been around forever, but the FLW Fantasy Fishing League takes sports fanaticism to a whole new level; those who come out on top at the end of the Forrest L. Wood bass tournament fantasy season will win a million bucks.

This is not for fishing, mind you, but for guessing which of the actual anglers in the competitions will place highest, and in what order. It is suspiciously like what is known as the "Calcutta" wager in saltwater fishing tournaments, except for one important difference, which makes Fantasy Fishing legal, while Calcutta's are not; there is no entry fee and no bet is required.

The event comes from the restless mind of Irwin Jacobs, chairman of FLW Outdoors as well as founder and chairman of Genmar Boats, the world's largest manufacturer of fishing boats. Jacobs has used 11 national fishing tournament circuits to drive traffic to his boat companies, and Fantasy Fishing looks like another likely effort in that direction.

"With the first-ever $1 million first-place payout at the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup, we knew it was time to give the public an opportunity to win just like professional anglers," Jacobs said.

The system works like this: Before each of six national tournaments, players will select their fantasy "team" of 10 from among pro anglers registered for the event. After the final weigh-in, the fantasy player who accumulates the most points by most nearly predicting the order of finish will be awarded $100,000, plus points toward the finale. That's right, $100,000 for guessing who fishes best.

At the end of the season, the fantasy player with the most points gets the $1 million.

If anybody but Irwin Jacobs were putting this event on, it would have scam all over it. But Jacobs, a former corporate raider and Forbes 500 member, has both the bucks and the background to make it happen. If the fantasy league generates the publicity that Jacobs anticipates, look for similar leagues to develop around the FLW Redfish Series, the FLW Kingfish Tour and the FLW Walleye League, among others.

The first FLW tourney for 2008 happens to be in Florida; the event kicks off Feb. 28 at Lake Toho out of Lakefront Park in Kissimmee. For details on the fantasy league, visit fantasyfishing.com.

BET ON PERCH: One of the better bets with the cool down will be speckled perch in fresh water. From now through the end of February, these panfish form large schools in deep water, and anglers who find the aggregations easily can catch the daily limit of 25 from many lakes.

Some of the best-known waters include Okeechobee, Kissimmee, Toho, East Toho, Panasoffkee, Istokpoga, Monroe, Jessup, George, Crescent and Harris, but just about every lake in the state has the species, also known as black crappie.

Specks are not nearly so hard to fool as largemouths, so the challenge is mostly in finding the schools. They're typically found at depths of 8 to 15 feet during winter, often close to the shad schools on which they feed.

The usual routine is to motor over the deeper parts of any lake watching a depthfinder. When you spot a school of fish on the chart face, drop over a marker buoy.

It's then a matter of returning repeatedly over the school, slow trolling 1/8- to 1/16 -ounce Hal Fly jigs or other tiny offerings, sometimes trimmed with a live Missouri minnow.

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