Not an Open and Shut Case

On Tuesday longtime FLW Tour hammer and media personality Scott Martin announced that he will not fish the reconstituted FLW Tour in 2020, instead competing in all eight Bassmaster Opens in an attempt to qualify for both the 2021 Bassmaster Classic and the Elite Series.

I don’t know if that’s a shot across the bow to one tour, a vote of confidence for another, a pure business decision, or the emotional choice that he described. It’s probably some combination thereof. Regardless, there is no doubt that he has the tools to get there. In addition to winning the AOY title in 2015, and the Forrest Wood Cup in 2011, he’s won seven regular season events and is approaching $3 million in FLW earnings. He hasn’t missed the Cup since 2005, and was Top 10 in AOY five of the past six years. That’s an enviable track record.

Still, it doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.

The four-event Open slates are one of the most unforgiving formats in fishing, without the cushion that you get in a six-, eight- or nine-tournament season. As Elite Series rookie Ed Loughran told me a few years back before he qualified (and after coming close several times), if you want to finish near the top of the heap at season’s end, you can’t have a bad event, you can’t have a bad day, and in all likelihood you can’t even have a bad couple of hours. It turns traditional one-tournament or season-long competition on its head – on the one hand, when you have a chance to win you might have to gamble a little, but on the other hand a failed gamble comes at great stakes.

It’s particularly tough when there’s a stinker or potential wild card on the schedule, like in the old days of the Ohio and Illinois Rivers. Even thinking back to the 2012 Open on Lewisville Lake, a not-altogether-horrible fishery, Brent Chapman and Josh Bertrand were tied at the end of regulation with 20-09 and Chapman went on to win. It took under 10 pounds to make the top 12, and most of the field blanked. It would’ve been possible to sacrifice an otherwise solid campaign that week as the result of a few bad choices, while conversely an angler who threw up a Hail Mary and lucked into a couple of 3-pounders would’ve vaulted up the leaderboard.

Martin is fortunate. He likely has the means and the following such that it won’t cripple his career if it takes him a couple of years to qualify. No one will be surprised if he makes it on the first try – or even if he double-qualifies – but it won’t be a walk in the park by any means.