FLW Outdoors announced its closing of the Saltwater Series as of Wednesday August 20, 2008. Dan Grimes, the tournament director announced it at the Rockport Redfish Captain's meeting. I must know, How is it that the owner of Ranger Boats and FLW Outdoors sees that it is fit that the saltwater series closes? Why should WE support Wal-Mart by buying saltwater lures, line, rods, and reels when they will only hand it over to bass fishermen. Nothing against the fishermen! They are great at what they do! Why should we buy Berkley saltwater products when it will only benefit freshwater FLW anglers. It would only seem fair that in return WE boycott any supporting sponsors. If not for the Saltwater Series staff (which this was their life and legacy) but for all of the anglers that will now have to find other options!!!!!!! A list of sponsors can be viewed at FLWOutdooors.com

Isnt ESPN picking up the redfish tour?

The main reason I think the shows failed is because of the coverage. FLW just did not show enough fishing compared to he ESPN Redfish series. When you watch FLW you see a commerical from begging to end and it takes half the show to get to the guys fishing. The owner of FLW once said they use the trails to sell boats and advertising and I am guessing neither was happening. Watching the ESPN Redfish series makes me want to find someone on the coast to partner with and start fishing.

77 of the 95 boats in the tournament series were Ranger boats. It actually costs FLW Outdoors money to air the shows. ESPN will only air Oh Boy! Oberto Redfish Cup by Sealy Outdoors. Ranger sells more boats due to word of mouth than by FLW Outdoors. A true quality boat will find itself popular in any environment. Ironically the president of IFA was a speaker at the Captain's meeting expressing his "greif" of OUR loss. At all the IFA tournaments there is awarded a Ranger boat for first prize... This was in the making well before the employees of FLW Outdoors had a grip of what was going on. The staff and ANGLERS only want the tournament trail to continue. The will is there, all is needed is the support from the Higher Ups.

Exactly they want to make money not lose money and the Oh Boy Oberto Redfish coverage is a lot better than the FLW coverage to me. Do not get me wrong I am sure the trail is a great trail but the trail has to make money in the end. I hate to see any quality trail leave for any reason. Was the field limited to 95 boats or is that all that shows up?

I think that the FLW may have changed their priorities from saltwater series to pick up the collegiate series. Pretty coincidental that they happened at the same time.

More than likely Ranger felt they were not making any money from the series from enough boat sales, so they pulled the sponsor money similar to what they did with the TTT circuit.

95 boats are all that showed up. The full feild limit is 120 boats. FLW, however, gets most of their money out of Wal-Mart. Yes ESPN covers the Cup much better but that is also because the entry fee alone is $3k per tournament, whereas FLW is $800. The owner of Ranger is also the owner and president of FLW Outdoors. Charlie Evans is his name. There is nothing wrong bass fishing by any means! However FLW was gaining more and more participants due to the Cup changing to an all invitational stance and upping the entry fee. I simply do not see why they believe that it hurt them to have the tournaments in session.

I thought Irwin Jacobs was the Owner of the Parent company thats owns both FLW and Ranger boats. I believe that company is "Genmar".

When it comes down to it like I said earlier about FLW and the same holds true for BASS and ESPN they have to make money and in the end the fisherman sometime loose out and it does suck. I would really love to have gotten to fish some of the Red Fish events.

I was just guessing really, but it does sound similar to what they did to the TTT events.
It is their business and they get to call the shots so to them it had to make the best business sense I reckon.

What I still don't understand is..... How FLW could actually be losing money. Maybe they weren't making as much as they wanted. Common sense isn't very common anymore.

Thats what I thought as well.
It is all about making money, why would they be in business for any other reason?

What is wrong is nothing is constant....the MLB, NFL, PGA don't go around changing everthing up every couple years.

We wonder why the sport suffers like it does and big sponors are hard to come by unlike NASCAR, NFL, ECT!

IMO....

Its all about advertising dollars. Nascar, NFL, NBA, MLB succeed the way they do due because of advertising $ they generate for networks. Anytype of fishing curcuit will always struggle to reach that level of exposure and success, just because there isn't enough folks out there like us who is willing to watch it.

Irwin Jacobs is the founder of FLW Outdoors. However, he sold the operation to Evans later on. I don't know why but it doesn't really matter because the organization only grew.