Spriggs is correct. Only the top 40 get paid at each event. Below are the total winnings YTD.

https://majorleaguefishing.com/standing/2019-bass-pro-tour/

Scroll down in the link below and you can see the payouts at every event this season.

https://majorleaguefishing.com/results/

As for going from business owner to employees, how do you figure Fishing on a string? How were these guys business owners under the B.A.S.S. umbrella? They didn't own anything and were fishing for their own money. The 80 guys in BPT are ALL owners of BPT.

Still waiting for you to list the "a few for sure", champ.

Jason Lambert comes to mind. I think he would have made more money on FLW Tour this year, despite the entry fees. He would have made the most if he could have moved to BASS. But he may be happy at BPT and may do great in seasons 2 and 3. But right now he won $0, while last year he won on Kentucky Lake

I tried to watch the other day and got bored pretty quick and turned it off. The last 10 minutes is exciting of each round to see who makes or misses the cut, but the rest of it isn't enough to hold my attention. I want to try and like it because the big name guys are fishing it, but so far it's kinda flat to me. I still enjoy watching BASS live mainly because the guys they have are much more entertaining and I still like the 5 fish format. Zona, Sanders and Hite bring a lot more to the table than Stone and JT to me from an entertainment as well as fishing info perspective. It seems there is a trend of people feeling the same as I do about it, so it begs the question are they really getting more exposure if people are turning it off after a few minutes or only tuning in to the last ten minutes? I understand as a business decision they had to make a change because the way BASS was handling things was not in the best interest of the anglers, so hopefully the BPT gets more exciting when they go to some other lakes with bigger fish again.

Time will tell who. As far as the 3 year contract , that's not even a factor in this day and age. You did see Duckett s attempt to control where the bpt guys could or couldn't work expo s and he got slapped down by sponsors. That's who at the end of the day runs the machine anyways..

[quote=fouzman]Spriggs is correct. Only the top 40 get paid at each event. Below are the total winnings YTD.

https://majorleaguefishing.com/standing/2019-bass-pro-tour/

Wow, there are some shocking numbers on there. Especially kvd $6000

They aren�t guaranteed to win money. They only �don�t lose their entry�, since the entry is paid. That�s my understanding.

How can Rojas have the 5th highest earnings and 50th in standings?

Points. He's won one event and gotten a $6k check in one other event. Very few points other than that.

I agree with a lot of people on here. I wanted to like it, but had kind of fallen flat on it's face. Seeing hundreds of pounds of fish and then the biggest bass caught is a 2lber, that's just not what I'm in it for. There's no feeling like fighting a big ol fish, and we I genuinely get excited watching someone else do it as well.

The other side is, it's only going to get worse. I think you are seeing a lot of the bigger names struggle because they haven't "learned how to play the game", which means putting down heavy power fishing and picking up the spinning rod. Now I have no issue with using a spinning rod, but it's just going to lead to nothing but small score-able bass across the board. These guys aren't running big fish patterns, so you aren't going to see big fish outside of the run in here and there. Not many people want to sit for hours watching a dink fest to see 3 or 4, 4-6lbers.

IMO, they should have kept MFL the way it was as it's own entity, and made the BPT about 5 biggest with the same catch and release concept. Now you have the best of both worlds going. With the rumors of MLF buying FLW, I'm afraid you are going to see even less of the 5 biggest tournaments and making bass the only real big fish entertainment out there.

Lastly, it's a very convoluted system to understand. How points for AOY are earned, all the different cuts and pre rounds and so forth. I don't want to do calculus to know how/why my favorite angler is doing well/bad. Also, it doesn't seem fair for some of these guys to go in an knock out a great round and it be whipped clean and get, in all reality, no credit for it. That would be my frustration if I were an angler fishing that format. I feel it also makes all the "records" that are being broken, kind of moot. WHo cares if you caught x amount of pounds or x amount of fish for two days if it all gets whipped clean in the end. It doesn't really matter in the end. There's no money or real recognition. Now Dean Rojas' huge bag, we all remember that and know how impressive that was.

But again, this is all just my opinion.

I do enjoy watching this format. However, I think they ought to limit the number of fish under 2 or even 2.5 lbs that are scoreable to 10 / day. That would have everyone try to find the bigger fish at some point in the day and would tighten the weight gap.

One thing I do believe is interesting about this format is having to manage your fish. How many of those BPT record holders went on to win? Seems like they guys that tear it up during first 2 rounds don�t do as well as those that barely get in, on the last 2 days of fishing.

I haven�t looked at the actual weights to see if there is a rend there, but it seems like it has been that way. So you have to catch enough to make the top 40, then the top 10, but not too much that you run out of fish. May not be an issue on a lake the size of Table Rock though.

If pros were coming to your local lake, would you prefer to see 80 of the best anglers trying to hook every fish they can, or go after best 5? I wonder which is harder on the fishery.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion but just to note that it requires no calculus. Only a click. You simply click on Scoretracker and they show you who's in the lead... then you simply click on Standings and they show you the money and points leaders, again no math to perform. Lastly, I would say that any of the previous stage winners would tell you that there's both real money and recognition on the line.

This one baffled me for sure.

Going to go back out in 15 mins. after the storm delay.