Top Pros Set To Fish Southern Open On St. Johns River This Weekend
After 2008 kicked off it’s tournament season last weekend with a record setting tournament in the Texas Stren Series at Falcon Lake, BASS will now begin their 2008 season with the Southern Open on the St. Johns River in Florida from Jan 17-19th. While I don’t expect the tidal fishery to pump out any record setting catches, I do expect that we will see some stiff competition between many pros we hear about during both the Elite Series events and the FLW Tour events.
Released by BASS was this weekends participant roster. Some big BASS names fishing will include: Ish Monroe, Michael Iaconelli, and John Crews. FLW big names include: Matt Herren, Sam Horenke, Terry Baksay, and Chad Morgenthaler. Those are just to name a few from both sides.
What’s to gain by these pros fishing in the Open events? For FLW Pros it could be a number of things. The two most likely reasons being qualification into the Bassmaster Classic or qualification to participate in the next years Elite Series events. Their hasn’t been any word of trouble or discontent from anglers about the FLW. The only thing that comes to mind that make some of the anglers unhappy is the change of rule pertaining to practice periods which was release by FLW months ago.
For the BASS Pros, it is one more way to help ensure qualification into the Classic and re-entry into the Elite Series events. It’s also likely that Pros from both sides are just filling empty gaps in their schedule and using the tournament as a means for a payout (which is not uncommon). After all, this is what they do for a living.
The FLW hasn’t released any rosters for its FLW Series Eastern Division tournament Jan 23-26 on Lake Okeechobee the following week, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see some of the FLW pros hop ship and drive up the road to compete in this event as well. We will have to wait this one out to see.
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POSTED IN: BASS, Elite Series, FLW, FLW Series, FLW Tour, Miscellaneous, Opens
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