In the southeast U.S. the states are smaller and the tourneys draw from several states. Just like in east Texas they draw from Tx. La. and Ar. on a regular basis. Once they get as far west as the metroplex or Austin they only draw from Texas. If anglers that lived in Arkansas fished Amistad they would have about 1500 miles of travel alone.
Amistad does draw from New Mexico but there are not a lot of tourney fisherman out that way.

Its pretty expensive to draw that many anglers that far of a distance? JMO Skeeter? My work schedule doesn't allow for me to put the time in to compete at that level right now, I'd just be donating which isn't a good fit for me.

I signed up as a co for Texoma but it's a lot of money. It will be interesting to see how many entries we have for that one. I didn't have the time or money for Amistad. They were almost begging for co's at the Mesquite show a couple weeks ago

I think they would have drawn more co anglers from west Texas if the oil crunch hadn't hit. People out there losing jobs and the ones still working are trying to hang on to their coins and jobs. $500 for co is a little steep,maybe not if you were able to draw some good pros and you could consider it a learning experience.Had some friends went the co route a few years ago and all they got was the wanna be pros.

This was an interesting article from Joe Balog. But with 112 anglers payout is tough. Seems like a bad model IMHO. 250 boats and your guaranteed not to get your money back. Numbers don't make much sense to me.
http://www.bassfan.com/opinion_article.asp?ID=1301#.VN0GWr6ihkg

Move the days to Friday ,Saturday and Sunday and it will fill up. I fished them for several years but basicly had to use all my vacation to do so.

#1 - Texas has more and better tournament competition (TTT, Champs, BLT).

That is the main reason! Beyond that...

#2 - Rayovac doesn't make financial cents 3+ days practice, 3 tourney days, travel distance, and the paybacks especially without a Ranger.

#3 - Rayovac and Opens are for solo fisherman that dream about the Tour or Elites. Since it is so hard travel wise for Texans on either top level schedule and we have so many good opportunities just within the state there isn't as much demand for the Triple A's here as stepping stone.

#4 - Until you can go back into history where you had to work hard just to make the Rayovacs and had to sign up for the entire year, many get turned off competing against jackpotters and the Rayledo sticks. Get it back to a true state series where everyone signs up for the year (like the tour) and you could have 150 full fields.

I don't think entry fees, travel, or coanglers have too much to do with it.

If I were betting they do away with texas divi and go back to just the central and throwing a rayburn in with centrals

I know plenty of guys fishing the rayovacs that don't care about the tour. They fish them to compete, get a decent check and not worry about tour bs and entry fees.

I wanted to fish as co-angler but schedule dates conflicted with other trail and then haul to amistad was too much. Coach

It pains me to say it but Rob Lay is 99% right on this.

obviously out of 115 guys there are "plenty". I'm just answering why we don't fill fields and that was a distant #3. really not much should be reasoned after considering all the great tournament trails we already have in Texas. I bet most other states wish they had what we do.

Amistad is fishing bad and a whipping to drive to. Rayburn Toledo are money pits for the non locals. It's a lot of commitment it time to prefishing enough to give yourself a fighting chance. Regular working guys I'm sure have a hard time missing that much work. I would fish them in a heartbeat but for the fact that I suck number 1 and number 2 I would hate to have some co in the boat with me and cause him to suck also. Lol

I fished Amistad as a co-angler and im sighed up to fish the other two in the series. If the low number of co-anglers is the reason for low turn out then FlW has to blame themselves for part of that by not letting co's have a chance at the Forrest wood cup. I know it is a long shot but at least before now there was a chance. Just about everything a co-angler does is a long shot and takes some luck: who u draw, how their style matches what u do, how their boat runs, their attitude, etc. Im boatless this year and thought i would give it a try. I met some great people and had a chance at some money. Im glad i was there. It seems to me the co-angler side would draw more people. Assuming your not in ranger cup: co-angler could win $27000 boat, angler who spends 5-times the money with entry, prefish, boat maint,towing,etc. wins $33000.