How to catch a bass tournament

The 10th-annual Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship has come and gone, but the milestone anniversary is a good opportunity to look back at the beginnings of the tournament and the dedicated people who got it off the ground.
Lionel Robert had been attending and emceeing at tournaments across Canada and the U.S. for some time when he thought Northwestern Ontario could use a bass tournament of its own.
“My idea was to hold it at Dog Tooth Lake [near Kenora,],” Robert recalled.
He spoke with Gord Pyzer at the Ministry of Natural Resources about the idea, and on the way out bumped into John Maffei, another avid angler.
Maffei suggested Robert approach the Town of Fort Frances and have the tournament on Rainy Lake, Robert said.
As a result of that conversation, and a chance meeting with Bill Boulton of the Rendezvous Trail Travel Association, Robert sent a letter to then-mayor Glenn Witherspoon with the proposal in 1992.
Eventually, the Rendezvous Trail and Robert teamed up to start organizing. “We’d been thinking about something like that anyway,” said Boulton, who was in charge of promotion at the travel association.
While Robert said he focussed on putting the fishing aspect together, the Rendezvous trail focussed on the events surrounding the tournament, like acquiring the big tent, getting souvenirs, and organizing the beer gardens, food court, and the night time entertainment.
“Before you can have a tournament like that, you’ve got to have infrastructure. In our case, we said, ‘Let’s get a tent.’ And that was no easy feat,” Boulton said, adding the tent cost about $100,000.
With the help of the district’s many service clubs, including the Royal Canadian Legion, the Lions, and Kiwanis, as well as with government funding, they were able to secure the money for the tent.
“A lot of people said ‘That’s crazy. What are you going to do with a tent like that? That’s nuts.’ Of course, now everybody thinks it’s just a wonderful thing,” Boulton laughed, adding the tent was an integral part to making the FFCBC a community event and not just a fishing tournament.
The goal from the beginning was to have a first-class tournament to attract the best anglers.
“It was always designed to be the elite tournament. That’s why the fees were so high, to give away good prizes. It’s certainly accomplished that,” Boulton said.
Robert said when he suggested a $1,000 entry fee at a meeting in Council Chambers here, people laughed.
“I told them, ‘This is what people want, and believe me, it’ll work.’ It had never been done in Canada,” he said. “There were a lot of naysayers.”
Boulton agreed. “It was hard to sell people on the concept of how large it could be,” he noted. “It was really a challenge to get people to buy into it.
“I worked two years on that before the first one ever happened,” Boulton explained, adding he got ideas by going to other tournaments and talking to people.
An expert at promotion, Boulton attended sports shows and used the media throughout Canada and the U.S. to promote the tournament.
Robert also knew many anglers from his experience on the tournament circuit, and spread the word.
A committee was also struck to help with the organization. “The first group of people was just excellent. They worked hard,” Boulton said.
The first year of the tournament was funded through the Rendezvous Trail and out of Robert’s pocket.
“It was always intended to be self-sufficient, which it is. But of course the first year it wasn’t,” Boulton said.
“The first year you always lose money,” Robert noted, adding he lost $14,000 out of his own pocket that first year.
“Everybody took a risk that first year. Those 47 first teams, they took a risk, same as I did, same as the Rendezvous Trail,” he said.
Despite the financial losses, the first Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship in 1994 was a great success.
Robert described the Sunday evening after the first tournament, with the various stakeholders sitting together and talking.
“We all knew we had lost money, but we said, ‘We did it. Next year, this thing is going to be a blast.’ And it was,” Robert explained.
“Financially we didn’t succeed, but in every other way, we did,” he added. “The anglers were just tickled pink with the hospitality Fort Frances showed them.”
For the second year, it was more important the tournament break even.
“By the second year, we knew we were running out of funding, so we worked hard with them to make sure that the whole tournament kept going on its own. So they incorporated themselves. Because you wouldn’t want to lose it,” Boulton explained.
Robert said there was a little bit of money left over the second year, and the tournament’s credibility and popularity continued to grow.
“The economic boom to the town during the whole thing is really good, which was the main goal,” Boulton said.
“We succeeded in putting on an event, not just a tournament,” Robert noted.