TOURNAMENT CIRCUITS DREW ON ARIZONA TALENT
Western Bass held its first tournament in Arizona at Roosevelt Lake. Fred Ward, Art Price, Floyd Preas, Jer- ry Loughran and others were at the tournament and were steady competitors from then on when West- ern Bass returned to the Arizona Lakes and to the Colorado River. As time went on, I fished many Western Bass tournaments, winning 5 of them, and the realization came that the payouts were insufficient to justify the expenditure. Even though Western Bass and my dear friend Harvey Naslund ran the tournaments extremely well, I felt that the payouts were never what they should be. So once again I had an idea and ran with it. I put up $5000 and, with some help from Garth Sauger and Dave Hayes, started an organization call the Southwest Association of Bass Champions, or SWAB as it came to be known. The first tournament was held at Lake Havasu; it was a draw tournament, boater to boater, and they had to flip to see whose boat they would use, which led to many disagreements. If memory serves, we had 66 competitors at that tour- nament. I was running the tournaments, making decisions and trying to fish competitively. After 5 or 6 tournaments, it was clear I could not do both and do them well. Somebody (I can’t remember who but it could have been Ranger dealer Jack Klatt) introduced me to Rich Schultz, who was interested in getting into the business. A deal was struck and I sold SWAB to Rich Schultz and Don Doty. Another player that had great influence on the bass fishing world was Gary Williams, who ran the Tempe Marine Fishing Tournaments. Gary and Danny Westfall, both of Tempe Ma- rine, started a small circuit of fishing tournaments that were run very ethically. This circuit ran for a number of years. Thus Arizona came into its own in the bass fishing world. Many firsts occurred over the first 15 years and growth came in leaps and bounds. Many notable fishermen came from the Arizona Bass Club and SWAB: Art Price, John Murray, Fred Ward, Bobby Garland, Jerry Loughran, Fred Kunkle, Okie Vaughn, Gary Yamamoto, Greg Hines, Larry Hines and others. Their in- fluence led others to follow in their footsteps such as Bret Hite, Dean Rojas, Mark Kile, Derek Yamamoto and Clifford Pirch to name a few. Rich Schultz & Don Doty proceeded to go full speed ahead with SWAB and made a deal with Western Bass and the two organizations became one. Rich & Don had some progressive ideas that led U.S. Bass to grow nationwide. Rich put together a fabulous magazine with great articles and advertising. He hired some great outdoor writers; among them Bill Rice, Tom Stiles, Matt Vincent and George Kramer. And they had a great tour- nament director in the person of Hal Huggins. The SWAB/West- ern Bass group had influence on boats and motors and changed the way fishing tournaments are held across the United States with rule changes and better payouts. The only influence I had in U.S. Bass was when I had the idea of a tournament open to fishermen na- tionwide with an entry fee of $1000 to be held in Las Vegas at Lake Mead in the month of August, which was the only time of the year that there were no conflicting tournaments scheduled. The idea took a great deal of persuasion. We met at Brookshires Coffee Shop across from Fred Ward Sport Centers in Sunnyslope, AZ (a suburb of Phoenix) for four hours. Art Price and I finally convinced Rich and Don to proceed with the tournament. That was it, though, for my involvement. They brought the glitz and glamor. With their flair for ideas and showbiz, Rich and Don put on the finest fishing tournament ever held at the time. The Western Bass Del Web National Tournament drew fishermen from all over the Unit- ed States. It became a yearly event and today is known as the U.S. Open. — Fred Ward
Arizona produced many influential bass pros, including (clockwise from top) Jennifer Fedrick (now Jennifer Duff of Lobina Lures), two-time U.S. Open champ John Murray and Okie Vaughn.
to Rich Schultz and soon after he concluded a deal with Western Bass and the two be- came one organization soon to be known as U.S. Bass. That organization would create the U.S. Open. Twice I finished 3rd in the U.S. Open and then used my experience out west to win the B.A.S.S. Lake Powell Invitational. I also placed 3rd at B.A.S.S. Elephant Butte Invitational. Before B.A.S.S. came out here, I went East and fish and qualified for the Bassmaster Classic in 1979.
50 SILVER EAGLES _ July 2011
Over all those years I often talked to other fishermen and came to the conclu- sion that we needed to be more like the PGA and have input on payouts and when and where we fished tournaments. There were several things that brought this to a boiling point for me. One was a fishing tournament at Lake Powell. It was a ‘Cham- pionship Tournament’ put on by John Fox who had a TV show and a tournament or- ganization. We put up an entry fee and at the conclusion of the tournament —NOW
LISTEN CLOSELY —John began to hand out free Las Vegas coupons as payment. That’s right! He was using those free coupons that could be picked up at any gas station on the way to Las Vegas and they were basically worthless. John Fox tried to get away with giving these for prizes and no money. About this time, U.S. Bass was deep in its monetary problems and at that year’s U.S. Open winner Larry Hopper’s $50,000 first place prize and some other top finishers payouts were made in the form of ‘promise