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Tight Lines: Despite my miserable performance, fantasy bass fishing has me
hooked
By Brett Prettyman
Tribune columnist
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:09/26/2007 06:10:36 PM MDT
Because I am a glutton for punishment but an optimist, I agreed last February
to play my second season of fantasy bass fishing. Yes, you read it correctly
- fantasy fishing compliments of ESPN Outdoors.
Like anglers really needed another opportunity to brag. Actually, my latest
effort allowed me to continue to show my usual sad state of fishing skill.
The season ended Sept. 16. I was reluctant to see how poorly I did, but I
finally checked the final results this week.
My entry, SL Slimers, finished 11th out of the 20 teams in our league -The
Kind Bassmaster Group. A good friend and fellow outdoors writer managed our
league. His entry, Angling for Love, not surprisingly took the league
championship.
My finish seemed respectable, until I looked at the standings and realized
that two of the teams never bothered to set a fishing roster for the
15-tournament schedule.
In Bass Fantasy Fishing, each team is given a budget and allowed to select
five real-life anglers on the tour without going over the money limit. Each
angler is assigned a value, with the best pros drawing the high values. There
is another option. The Super Six Pick'em uses no salary cap and just involves
picking the top six anglers for each tournament.
Back to my disgrace. The guy who finished in 10th, almost 800 points ahead of
me, didn't even join the league until the third tournament. Mind you, this
guy gets paid to tell fantasy fishers which anglers to pick for each
tournament.
The ESPN fantasy Web site shows that I finished in the top 54 percent of all
the teams involved in the various leagues. I can't recall if finishing in
8,735th place is better than I did last year.
Bragging rights are definitely part of the draw of fantasy fishing, but there
is a lot of fun to be had otherwise. One of my favorite parts of the league
is logging on and seeing the names of the teams. Among them: Goldfish Digger,
Bass Breath and the one I wish I had come up with, Passin' BASS.
You can see we take it quite seriously. Chances are I will sign up again when
the new season starts. I've got to have hope that I will one day crack the
top 10 in my league.
In the meantime, I'll keep my fantasy ego appeased in my baseball, hockey and
basketball (defending champion among my co-workers, thank you very much)
leagues.
brettp@sltrib.com |
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