HARRISON TOWNSHIP, Mich.— When major sporting competitions play out, it’s about the score, the championship, the legacy, and all of that. But as Toledo will be reminded when the 2021 Solheim Cup is played at the historic Inverness Club, it’s also about the money. The economic impact of a big-time event is quite a windfall for the host city and region.
It’s not much different when that mega event is a B.A.S.S. tournament — one of the stops on the Bass Anglers Sportsmans Society tour. It’s about the fish, but it’s also about the currency.
So when the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship rolled into southeast Michigan for a monster three days on the water that opened on Sunday, Macomb County Executive Mark A. Hackel and others in the communities along the Michigan side of Lake St. Clair were prepared to hear the cash registers humming.
“This event will have a huge economic impact for our county,” Hackel said. “We are thankful to our partners with B.A.S.S. and hope tournament participants enjoy Lake St. Clair, the best bass fishing lake on the planet.”
That world-class bass fishing found in Lake St. Clair brings the B.A.S.S. money-making machine and the top bass fishermen here often. The current tournament is the seventh B.A.S.S. event on Lake St. Clair since 1994, including recent visits here in 2014, 2015, and 2017. The 2020 schedule for the B.A.S.S. Elite Series includes a return to Lake St. Clair next season.
Records show that bringing the series to Lake St. Clair provides the wow factor B.A.S.S. is looking for in its host lakes — boatloads of big bass. Past tournaments held on this fish-rich lake were all won by anglers who posted better than 20-pound daily averages for the five fish they brought to the daily weigh-in.
The tournaments also provide the substantial economic wallop the host communities hope to experience. Records from past Bassmaster Elite events show that a typical Elite Series tournament will churn up more than $1.1 million in direct economic impact during the week-long schedule of events associated with the tournament.
The secondary economic impact, which extends indefinitely into the future, can be much more significant. B.A.S.S. and the host communities that stage its major tournaments also gain considerable exposure and publicity from the long-term coverage of these events across a wide range of media outlets.
ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and The Pursuit Channel will show the event numerous times, and because of the uniqueness of the event and the big-money bass fishing phenomenon, the local and regional media coverage is often substantial. Data from B.A.S.S. indicates that locations that play host to Elite Series tournaments experience an average of $17.9 million in tourism revenue over the two years immediately following the event.
A separate study conducted by the nonprofit Michigan United Conservation Clubs shows that the Michigan cash registers are primed for the event. In a typical year, the roughly 1.1 million anglers in the state contribute $2.3 billion to Michigan's economy with their purchases of gear and clothing, booking hotel rooms, along with buying meals, fuel, and other ancillary purchases.
For the individual tournaments it stages, B.A.S.S. has made certain it is about a lot more than the fishing, and that is likely one of the primary reasons that this year’s Elite Series events have drawn an average of 12,200 fans. The organization has created an array of free, family-friendly activities that allow the host communities to surround the tournament with a week’s worth of entertainment, education, and events.
Here, about an hour-and-a-half north of Toledo and just east of the suburban Detroit community of Sterling Heights, spectators and fans of competitive bass fishing have taken part in the Bass, Brews & BBQ Festival and visited the Bassmaster Elite Series Outdoors Expo. The tournament hosts staged Fan Appreciation Day on Saturday as part of B.A.S.S.’s “Year of the Fan” festivities.
In the days leading up to the start of the actual tournament on Sunday, there also were opportunities for fishing enthusiasts to meet Elite pros for photos and autographs, and learn tips and techniques during the Bassmaster Academy. There were special activities for kids, an array of local vendors, demo boat rides and a show from local musician Josh Ross as part of the Mercury Concert Series. To improve the overall community along the lake, volunteers picked up trash throughout Lake St. Clair Metropark for four hours on Sunday as part of the B.A.S.S. Nation Clean-Up Challenge.
The showcase events for the fans are often the daily tournament start and mass launch, and the often raucous final weigh-in held in a stadium style setting. The final weigh-in for this tournament takes place at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Lake St. Clair Metropark.
The weather has not only been the wild card for the Lake St. Clair tournament, it has been wild. The opening day of the event on Sunday served up rain and stiff winds that produced whitecaps in some sections of the roughly 430-square-mile lake. St. Clair’s average depth of just 11 feet allows the wind to really crank up the wave machine.
Minnesota angler Seth Feider, who weighed in a five-fish catch on Sunday that went 26 pounds, 12 ounces and gave him the early lead in the Angler of the Year competition, found big fish in the rough water.
“There’s this one buoy right on the river channel that’s kind of a community place,” Feider said. “I was rolling up there and the waves were crashing in really hard.”
Despite his success, Feider said the wind and the waves actually prevented him from fishing his preferred location on St. Clair, on the south end of the lake. “There would have been 5- to 6-foot waves down there today with the way it was blowing,” Feider said.
The 2020 Bassmaster Elite Series season will open in Palatka, Fla., with an event at the St. Johns River on Feb. 6 to 9, and nearly eight months later the tournament trail will close with the final event Aug. 20-23 on Lake St. Clair.
First Published September 30, 2019, 5:08 p.m.
