Here's the schedule. I think it will be a great season in 2006 for the Cabela's Masters Walleye Circuit!!!!

Central Division
March 25/26 – Spring Valley, IL – Illinois River
June 24/25 – – Escanaba, MI on Bays de Noc
Sept 16/17 – Lake City, MN -- Mississippi River

East Division
April 22/23 – Trenton, MI – Detroit River and Lk Erie
May 20/21 – Henderson Harbor, NY – Lk Ontario
August 19/20 – Linwood, MI – Saginaw Bay

Exhibition Tournament
July 15/16 – Spirit Lake, ND – Devil’s Lake

Championship
October 4-7 – Prairie du Chien, WI – Missisippi River (World Walleye Championship)


The Exhibition tournament will not carry with it any Central Division or East Division points. It will stand alone without points. We're testing the water (so to speak) with the hopes of launching a new West Division. We'll see what kind of response we get.

The Exhibition tournament, will, however, qualify for Challenge Points. So if you fish all three tournaments in a division you can pick it up for your fourth tournament and calculate your points in the usual and customary way to determine your Challenge Points.

Remember -- in 2006 we are launching Walleye Madness. Teams will need to pay $200 to register in order to get seeded. They will also need to fish 3+1 tournaments -- or the CHALLENGE.

We'll place the top 64 teams into BRACKETS just like you are used in March for college basketball. Then....at the end of the 2006 season you'll see JUST WHO YOU HAVE TO BEAT to advance to the next round. You don't have to beat the field; just beat the one team you're bracketed against. The Team of the Year (#1) is bracketed against #64. #2 against #63. Etc.

The 64 teams in the bracket will pay an extra $600 for the spring Valley tournament in March 2007. ($600 for SV entry + $600 for Walleye Madness). Day 1 at Spring Valley the field is reduced from 64 to 32. Day 2 (not two day cume weights, just day two weight) the field is reduced from 32 to 16. All teams that advance to Sweet 16 get their $800 back. From there, we do a special tournament for TV for those 16 teams. Payout another $800 at Final Four. Another $800 at Final 2. And $20,000 (exact amount TBD based on entries) for winner.

That's Walleye Madness.

And you'll need to fish the Challenge in 2006 to get in. Only costs $200 in 2006 to get in. The remainder isn't paid until 2007. Questions?

Oh...one more thing.

If there is a tie at any time in the bracket -- could easily happen with ZEROS) the lower seeded team advances. So if Team #1 and Team #64 (seeded) both zero on day one of Spring Valley in 2007; Team #1 advances to the next round due to being the LOWER seed.

Come on...fire away your questions. Excited about it? Confusing! :-) Ask away.....

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kristine Houtman,

Not a word? Wow. Everybody was chomping at the bit for the schedule. No comments? No questions? Not even about Walleye Madness? It can't be crystal clear. I never explain things THAT well. :-)

I don't mean this in a bad way. I think there are quite a few people (including myself) that are worried about another great lakes tournament with the outrageous gas prices. Mark and I are right in the middle of all the sites but I think we will be bowing out due to the increased expenses. Something tells me that we are not alone. The MWC cannot control gas prices but I don't think people realize just how expensive it is to fish on these huge bodies of water. As far as the Walleye Madness goes, fantastic idea. Hopefully that will offset the high gas prices and get more teams participating in the challenge.

Well since you asked..
I think your schedule for 06' is GREAT no complaints here..Even the locations on the East side for the challenge are Fantastic..
The Madness still trying to quantify this one..

If there are no complaints then it must be the best schedule ever! I think it is close to perfect. Now will someone teach me how to catch walleyes when it counts. I think I forgot!!!!

The schedule looks good.
I hope they all fill?
The Madness and the challenge?
I would get ride of it and put the money into the the tournament payouts.
Just my thoughts.
schmitty

Just for my clarification. Will all teams that decide to fish all the central tournaments for instance be required to take part in the Walleye madness and fish a challenge event also?
In other words $1800 for the 3 main tournaments, $600 for the challenge/exhibit, $200 WM in addition to the exra $600 in 2007 at SV for a total of $3,200 or can you choose just to fish the 3 tournamnets for $1800 and not be part of the Walleye madness?

Then in 2007 at Spring Valley those that are seeded are fishing for 2 prizes. The first being $25,000 for the regular Spring Valley tournament and then how much $$$ for the 3 day seeded tournament with the top 64 if full participation. I assume the 3rd day fish off with the last 16 teams would happen on Monday? Thanks.

What will the boundaries be for the Escanaba tourney?

Why would the Trenton tourney also include the Ohio waters of Lake Erie? Why allow guys to drive across closed walleye waters to get to open waters (40+ miles) with potential of unpredictable wind to cause rough seas for the return trip?

Since the Detroit River is plenty big in size, makes sense to just keep the tourney in the river.

Appreciate your comments, MWC staff.

Thanks

As always -- you can fish just one tournament. Or two. or three. Your choice.

If you fish all three -- THEN your points will be added up to see if you qualify for the Championship. If you don't fish all three -- there won't be any Championship points.

If you do decide to fish 4 tournaments -- 3 in one division plus a 4th Challenge tournament -- there's $20,000 in cash for the top 5 teams and 20% advance to the Championship.

You don't have to do the Challenge. Never have had to. Only if you want to win more...and have another shot at the Championship

You don't have to do the Walleye Madness. Only if you want to. If you don't pay the $200 then you don't get seeded. Your choice. If you get seeded and pay the Walleye Madness tournament fee ...in 2007 now....then you compete for the Walleye Madness purse. Which will be paying out $800 to the teams that make the 16 cut. And another $800 every time you advance. $20,000 for the winning team. These numbers assume a 64 team field getting seeded and all 64 paying the $600 fee in 2007. If we don't have that many teams then the payout would be smaller and some of the lower seeds might get a "bye" for the first round.

Hope that helps.

Oh...and about boundaries. Last year we had to cross Michigan waters for Ohio waters as Michigan was closed. In 2006, however, Michigan waters will be open. So it is a little different scenario.

We haven't finalized the boundaries... still working on that.

When are the boundaries for the Detroit River/Lake Erie tournament going to be finalized? Is it likely going to be the smae as last year but with MI waters obviously included?

Would like to be able to make prefishing reservations soon.

Thank you,
Chad Carroll

Yes, the tournament boundaries will be the same as last year, except MI will be open so we won't have to exclude that portion of the lake. Don't have boundary lines drawn yet for Bays de Noc...but I can answer that one for you.

Hope that helps!

Kristine

Yes, helps a ton, thanks for the quick respsonse.

Chad

Kristune
If we fish the (3) East Tournaments. Are you saying we can fish a central event and add points to the east points to have more points for the championship total.
Is this what you mean by challenge points.

I'm sorry -- I wrote out a length reply right after you asked this -- and now today I see that it isn't here. Sorry about that! I'll try again.

No...it doesn't mean exactly that. Your East Division points are only from the 3 tournaments in East. But...there's $20,000 in Challenge purse; and 20% of Challenge field that is invited tothe Championship. So that's the incentive to fish four tournaments. (Also - a new reason is Walleye Madness!)

Anyway - there is a separate accumulation of points for Challenge. Like golf -- the LOWER the points the better. And it is designed to be equitable between LARGE 200 field tournaments and how some of our smaller tournaments have been 50 or so.

So the procedure is to take your rank (same as finishing position) and divide that by the number of teams in the tournament. Yes -- you'll need a calculator. At least I do anyway!!! Take that number times 100 and then 'lop off' at the 100th decimal. Is this feeling like math class again! :-)

Finishing 5th place in a 220 boat field is....
5 divided 220 times 100 is 2.27272. The lop off part just makes it 2.27. Okay...so you would do that step for ALL FOUR of the tournaments that you fished.

Finishing 5th in a smaller tournament is still good -- but not as helpful in the race for points. Does that make sense?

5/51*100 = 9.80392 or 9.80

That's the methodology.

Now...how does the Challenge help you get to the Championship? Well....20% of the field is invited. So if 45 teams were "in" the Challenge -- 9 are invited to the Championship out of 45. Which 9? We start at the top...and work our way down. But we SKIP OVER any teams that are already in through the East Division or the Central Division. Which usually means we're skipping over the top teams. If they did quite well in 3 out of 4 tournaments -- they are PROBABLY going to the Championship via their division. So...the advantage is to the teams that might just miss the cut in their division.

My suggestion is to print out the WWC06 roster on the website and compare it to the Leaderboard points (print that out too). It will help you see that there is definitely an advantage to picking up that 4th tournament. #1 -- because like Jay and Chief -- you can make Team of the Year and get a bonus of $13,000. Or like the next 4 -- that took home $1750 bonus. But also teams like Mark & Cathy DeDeker that are now going to the Championship from the Challenge, but missed the cut in the Central Division.

DOES THAT HELP? I so hope the system doesn't drop this reply again. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!
It might be a good idea to put the 2006 schedule on the home page now. More people might see it and become interested. I don't know if someone with a little interest will search for the information but if you put it up front you might create the interest.
Just my thought.

when can or do i fax or mail my entry form for early bird can i send it out today 27dec05 so it gets to you by the 4th of just fax it on the 4th of january also i think the detroit "river" tourney should only be the "RIVER" not the lake too this way it challenges the anglers to be good river fisherman and not just big water fisherman and it would be fairer to the anglers that dont have bigger boats

You can drop it in the mail or fax starting on the 4th of January. If it takes a couple of days -- no worries. There's no pressure that it be here on the first day of registration. However, we do want to see as many early bird registrations EARLY in the window as possible. This will help us with getting the directory booklet organized. It is hard to have a bunch of teams wait until the last few days; and then we need to turn around forms/photos quickly.

I realize boundary decisions will never make everyone happy. But we've discussed this one in the AAP and there is a split down the AAP as well...so we've made our call -- both river and lake if the weather holds -- river only if the weather doesn't hold -- and that's it. MWC East is a lot of "big water" so either anglers are ready with the type of boat they need -- or they aren't ready yet. Sag Bay and Lake Ontario also will require something that can handle big water.

Look forward to the early bird entries starting next week. We're gettin' close now! ;-)