Championship Close to Home

The Forrest Wood Cup begins this week on Lake Lanier, just down the road from me, and I'm looking forward to the big event. It's the championship for the FLW Tour, and 78 pros are competing for a first prize of half a million dollars.

An interesting thing from my own perspective is that while the nearest part of Lanier is less than 20 miles from my home, I've spent WAY more time Arkansas' White River, the upper Mississippi in Minnesota, Pickwick Lake in North Alabama and numerous other places.

One good and bad about being an outdoor writer is that I get opportunities to fish in a lot interesting places. I love visiting other waters and sampling their offerings, but I end up spending most of my Georgia work time in my office, writing fish stories. I do get out in North Georgia and western Carolina trout and smallmouth streams as often as possible, but I really haven't spent much time on Lanier, despite the fact that it's one of the world's finest spotted bass fisheries.

Although I have no claim to Lanier as home waters for the reasons just described, there's still something cool about having such a big event in your back yard, and I plan to spend as much time as possible watching blast-offs and weigh-ins and roaming around the FLW Outdoors Expo this weekend at the Gwinnett Center. I'll do my best to pass along some of what I find.