Couple things:

E50 Economics

I've spoken with tour pros who are in and not yet in the new Bassmaster Elite 50 series, and asked them how they feel about these events. It's tough to get a good answer since the first one ended just a few days ago, but it's always good to have before and after reads on things.

As you'd expect, most pros praise ESPN and BASS (and JM Associates) for conducting no-entry-fee tournaments, which basically amount to pros being paid to fish – instead of paying to fish – a la the Bassmaster Classic and the FLW Tour Championship. But I'm not sure from talking with these pros whether they understand what's involved there.

Most of them basically say "it's about time" and cite the sponsor money coming into the sport now. True, in a way, but it's like anything: Until you actually do it yourself, you don't really know what's involved. After working through the Top Gun tournament (more on that coming soon), I now know what's involved. Putting on a big tournament is expensive. Super-expensive. And believe it or not, companies for the most part aren't banging down bass fishing's door to give it money. Certainly not on the scale of the other "established" sports.

Back to the E50s: Even with the host communities ponying-up money for BASS to bring a tournament to them, even with Bassmaster Tournament Trail sponsors footing part of the bill, and even with sexy, worth-more-money ESPN part of the equation, I'd be surprised if ESPN and BASS are profiting a nickel on these events. Obviously, in business you don't want to do that for too long.

The bottom line here is that while I do believe tour entry fees are too high and should be substantially reduced, the tournament business is an expensive one. So expensive that Ray Scott is fond of saying that he never made a dime on tournaments, but he knew they were important so he kept doing them. So I hope tour pros feel less that they're entitled to something like the E50s and more that they're grateful for them (though they have some skin in this game too).

'More' On the Christian Matter

One of the most popular questions we receive at BassFan HQ, or even out on the lake fishing, is: "What really happened with Tony Christian?" We always answer the same way, which is that we don't know anything more than you've read on BassFan.com.

BassFan has spent a significant amount of time chasing down what might loosely be called "leads" (a few of the more solid-sounding rumors) about Christian, but none have turned out to be truthful as far as we could discover. As such, they don't bear repeating here. It's important to note that none of these rumors came from people who were personally involved in whatever the rumors addressed.

After all that, here are a couple of personal opinions, for whatever they're worth:

> If I had to guess, I'd say that fewer than five people know what actually happened. In other words, only a few people really know why Christian was DQd on day 2 of the Atchafalaya FLW and subsequently banned from all FLW Outdoors events. I wouldn't be surprised if the tournament director that day doesn't even know (FLW wouldn't let us speak to him), which brings me to my next item.

> I'm not sure if whatever did or didn't go down regarding Christian was completely about day 2 at Atchafalaya. Don't read some conspiracy theory into that. It simply means that: a) FLW Outdoors hasn't provided enough information for me to feel comfortable that that's the case; and b) the investigating that BassFan has done also hasn't turned up enough information for me to feel that that's the case.

That's about it. I might be 100 percent wrong about this stuff, but that's where I've come out so far. As always, if anyone personally knows anything or has real evidence of anything involving FLW Outdoors' handling of this matter or about Tony Christian, send it to us and we'll get to the bottom of it as best we can. If there's more to this story, we want to find out what it is.

And don't think we've forgotten about it. It's always on the back burner.

I wanted to talk about one more thing here. In connection with the Christian matter, we've seen the term "sources," as in anonymous sources used by reporters, used pretty freely – so freely that it seems to have lost all meaning. In the reporting world (real reporting), sources aren't people who hear things. Sources are people who know things either because they participated in them or because they have direct knowledge of the event, document or whatever it is by other means.

In other words, in this case "sources" aren't pros who fished the Atchafalaya FLW or other people who were there. And they aren't just anyone who works at FLW Outdoors. All those people heard the same rumors everyone else did.

Here's an example of what I mean. When a rumor about a merger between two big companies hits the streets, do the people in the cubicles on the second floor of the companies' headquarters actually know the details? Or are they just hearing rumors too? Again, I think only a select few people could confirm or deny those rumors with any authority.

Unless any information surfaces to the contrary, I'll have to take Tony Christian at his word, though I wish he'd said more. Regarding FLW Outdoors' handling of this matter, I disagree with it but that's their business. I will say that if I fished FLW Outdoors tournaments, I'd hate to think I could get DQd without ever knowing why.

A Little Perspective

Just to put a little perspective on this stuff: The other day I saw a an AP photo in our local paper of a U.S. soldier dying behind a wall in Iraq during a firefight. I don't know what to say about it except that it made me sick, it made me sad, it made me mad and it made me proud.

It's pretty tough to swallow that people are dying so we can fish.

God bless our soldiers.

Jay Kumar is BassFan's CEO.