Finish second and you'll never make money bass fishing locally.

There are professional bass anglers. They fish with FLW & BASS and are dedicated to spending 200 days a year on the water and are at least partially funded by some corporation to advertise products or services. This article is not about those fishermen. Frankly touring professional fishermen represent less than 1% of tournament fishermen and have little to do with the sport except push products onto the other 99% of people that compete in local bass tournaments.
Please understand that there are some really good fishermen that just fish within 3 to 4 hours of their house. Some of the best sticks in the country will never be heard of farther than a tank of gas from where they call home. The average tournament bass angler will never win more than 5,000 dollars in any single event or more than 20,000 in a year. If they do it will often be due to a single tournament win.
A tournament bass fisherman must be willing to compete for something other than money. Looking at the numbers it is fool's folly to even think about making money bass fishing.

Take a guy that is going to fish two trails in a given year. The first is a pretty big regional deal with entry fees of $300 per event and the second is a more local trail with entry fees of $150.00 per event. Our fisherman has a good partner and will only have to pay half expenses. Truck and boat payments will be considered just part of being a fisherman and not specifically needed for tournament fishing. (Although I wonder why anyone would need a 21foot bass boat with a 250 and twin HDS graphs to just hobby fish.) Also all fishing gas will be just for fishing, no hotel dollars added and only an additional $500.00 per year in extras to include all tackle, line and accessories that a hobby fisherman would not buy. We all know that $500.00 is awful light for all those lake specific "gotta haves" that we all buy the week before a tourney.

Let's say the regional draws a strong 250+ boats to every event and the local draws 40+ per event. The payout structure in both will be paying back one in six places. (A lot of trails pay even less to up the first place prize and create a lottery mentality in the entrants)

If you finish in the top 50 out of 300 in the regional and top 10 out of 60 in the local trail you get a check.
The expenses for the trails are as follows:

Yearly membership fees: $35.00 & $30.00
Six Regional Entry fees: $900.00
Six Local Entry fees: $450.00
Tournament Extras: $500.00
(These are 1/2 as these are team events.)

Total Tournament Expenses for one year of local tournament fishing: $ 1915.00

Let's say that our fisherman is in the money 8 out of twelve times during the year and finishes as high as third on the regional trail and second on the local trail. Finishes third in angler of the year in the regional and finishes fourth in points in the local. How did he come out financially?
These are actual results from two real trails and two actual fishermen in 2008 & 2009:

Regional:
Event 1 Finish in third out of 278 win $ 1000.00
Event 2 Finish in top 15% and win $300.00.
Event 3 Finish in top 10% and win $300.00
Event 4 Finish in top 20% and are seven spots out of the money.
Event 5 Finish 67th out of over 180 boats and no money.
Event 6 Finish outside the money in the last event.

Total winnings: $1600.00 Points Finish: 3rd out of over 300 teams that competed in the year.
Notes: The winnings are half actual check because it is a team event(the expenses were just half the entry fee also), The team never finished in bottom half of a tourney during the year.

NET; As for the regional events, after entry fees, membership dues and a conservative $250.00 in tournament extras for this trail the grand total is:

Net winnings: $415.00 Dollars.

I was gonna go into as much detail with the local trail but the numbers were very similar.
The team was in top half of field five out of six times. cashed three checks for $400.00 (that is per person actual winning $800) and finished fourth in AOY points.

So for their fine efforts in the local trail each man lost $330.00.00 dollars.

So for their incredibly good fishing that included 8 checks and top 5 finishes in AOY in regional and local tours the team MADE $85.00 dollars per man! And they did better than 99% of the other teams!!!

And of course this is all using the rather ludicrous assumption that tournament fishing brings no extra gas, hotel, tackle, license, breakage cost above $250.00 per trail. As well as the truck and boat payment being left out!
It actually really surprised me at how badly the money played out in tournaments when I did this research. If you didn't outright win a large event you lost money. I could not find a single instance where a fisherman made money just finishing above average. And in no instance did I find a fisherman that made money just beating 75% of the field every time.
I am going to start a small series of blogs that use actual fisherman's results from the last few years in series from Florida to Texas and look at how they did financially versus finish and point standings.

It is my belief that less than 5% of local fisherman make a dime and most do not make a cent without a tournament win.

If you can contribute something different please feel free to comment and tell us who you are, where you fish and how much you made last year.

At this time I have to be honest I think local tournament bass fishing must be about bragging rights, competition and ego because it sure isn't about the money. Which begs the question, why not just have trophy tournaments? Must be more.........................