Huge bass tournament takes over Lake Lanier

“To have an event like this come to your home water and with that kind of payoff, I’m looking at it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” Mann said. “It would mean everything to me to win it.”

“It’s a pretty awesome deal, winning this tournament,” said Gainesville’s Luke Clausen, another favorite and winner of the 2004 Cup. “We spend so much time on the water daylight to dark. This is a reward for all that hard work.”

Seventy-eight of the top pros from the various FLW Outdoors tournament circuits will compete during the four-day event, beginning at 6:30 a.m. each day and culminating with weigh-ins inside the Gwinnett Center arena in Duluth daily at 5 p.m. Each day, anglers weigh-in their five biggest bass, which will be released back into the lake afterwards.

Organizers expect big crowds at the Gwinnett Center for the daily weigh-ins and to the FLW Outdoors Expo products show (noon-5 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday). Parking and admission to all the events are free.

Fishing proponents in Georgia are hoping for big things from the tournament, too. The Forrest Wood Cup will put Gov. Sonny Perdue’s Go Fish Georgia program on its biggest stage.

The $30 million initiative, passed by the State Legislature in 2007, aims to elevate the profile of Georgia fishing by increasing economic development, improving access to state lakes and increasing angling participation. Part of the plan has included the construction of so-called mega-ramps, multi-laned access points that could also host big tournaments. The plan includes construction of a fishing-themed visitor’s center called the Go Fish Georgia Center in Perry, which is planned to open in October.

The Forrest Wood Cup will take off from and return to one of Go Fish’s recipients, Gainesville’s Laurel Park, where a $1 million renovation project using local and matching state funds expanded the facility with eight boat launches, 300 parking spaces and a weigh-in/amphitheater area.

Perdue, who lamented over the notion that anglers were traveling through Georgia to spend their bass-fishing dollars in neighboring states, said two years ago when Forrest Wood Cup deal was announced that it was “exactly what I envisioned for the mega-ramps ... as part of Go Fish.”

The state estimates this week’s tournament could have an economic impact between $20 million and $30 million for Hall and Gwinnett counties. FLW Outdoors, which runs the Cup and other big tournaments, reported that the 2008 Forrest Wood Cup at Lake Murray near Columbia, S.C., pumped in $46 million to the local economy.

“As soon as the governor announced Go Fish, we started getting calls [from tournament organizations],” said John Biagi, the state’s chief of fisheries and the lead administrator for Go Fish Georgia.

The timing was right for FLW Outdoors, which sees Lanier and metro Atlanta as prime bass fishing areas to promote its sport. On the flip side, Lanier can use the national exposure to show it has fully recovered from the 2007 drought that had shrunk the 38,000-acre reservoir to historic low levels. Lanier is considered one of the world’s finest spotted bass fisheries and catching those deep-water fish will play a key role in who wins this week.

“I’ve got to give your governor a lot of credit for romancing us to come here. I’ve been blown away,” said FLW Outdoors chairman Irwin Jacobs, who added that he will make two major announcements “that will change the sport forever” during the weekend events. “To have your governor say, ‘Let’s go fishing, Georgia,’ I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere.

“We’ll bring other tournaments. There’s no doubt we’ll be back.”

Mann recognizes that he has an ambassador’s role in promoting the lake and the state.

“If you look at it geographically and look at where people go bass fishing, we’re at the center of it all," he said. "This is the heart, the absolute heart, of bass fishing.”