My Opinion on 3 Day Strens

     BassFan recently reported on the possibility of the FLW Outdoors sanctioned Stren Series reducing it tournaments from a 4 day format to a 3 day format. When I read the report I took notice of the fact that the events would be speculated to go from Thursday to Sunday and change to a Thursday to Saturday schedule. Let me just quickly throw my two cents in on this.

     I am not exactly sure why or how the consideration to reduce the day format started. If I had to guess, I would assume that it was an effort to help reduce resource costs on FLW’s part while increasing angler participation. As we all know participation is down across all boards due to the increase in gas prices and the weakened economy. With the amount of money that we as anglers have been forced to pay into our fuel tanks, it makes it harder for striving anglers to continue to put up money for lodging, food, and equipment costs. So reducing the events to a 3 day format makes sense for everybody. But I still think that there is another change that could be made to increase participation.

     As I stated, speculation had suggested that a change would have the events running from Thursday through Saturday. I for one have been preparing myself to begin competing in the Stren Series events. The change would definitely improve my ability (financially) to participate but it would still remain difficult to get all of the time needed to fully compete. Many of the anglers competing in the events have the time to take off from work to get a full practice in and compete without hesitation. On that same note, many of the anglers struggle to find the time away from work. My only suggestion, if this would be a move to help increase participation, would be schedule the events to run Friday through Sunday. Over a 3 event schedule, that is three vacation days that many of the anglers would get back.