"It was great to have Outdoors in the Heartland [an American TV production company] here; that will be great promotion for the community," she continued. "We also had Thunder Bay TV, Shaw Cable, and CKDR [radio] in town at various points to cover it." "We will have lots of promotional material from all of this," said Monique Ribey, staffer at the Bass Classic HQ. "And it was so good to have the headquarters," said Manford. "Monique, Carolyn [Anderson] and our super volunteer, Matt Lesnick did so much. People could drop in and get updated, or whatever they needed." "We still need help with the festival part, more involvement from the business would be nice," she said, adding that it has come a long way in a short time. "This year we did see lots of families from out of town come for the weigh-in on the last day… Maybe next year we can get them all week." About the only downer in the whole event involved hazard and channel markers going missing on the Floodwaters. One of several cases of missing markers contributed to an accident (young angler Walker Wegner was injured, and the boat damaged). The Floodwaters can be a tricky piece of water to navigate, and the ABC committee did a lot of work to map and mark hazards, which made the incidents particularly dismaying. In town, the show under the big tent was a delight, with the tension building all afternoon on Saturday. The team of Glenn Leroux and Trevor Zimak, 13th after Friday, brought in the biggest bag of the weekend on Saturday (21.03 lbs), and held the overall lead right up until the last pair, day one leaders Laverne Haney and Mark (Henry) Warren, weighed in. Their bag was the only other one to exceed 20 lbs (20.2), and that was enough to win them the $14,000 top prize. Leroux/Zimak had to settle for $5,000. Tournament favourite Luc Levesque of Fort Frances (fishing with Mike Gerstner this year) took third spot and $4,000, while an International Falls duo, Gary and Kyle Potter, took fourth place and $3,000. Kim and Aaron Wiens had a great day Saturday, and moved up from 14th to fifth place, a spot worth $2,500. Defending champs Cuffy Kehl and Shane Manford, third after Friday's fishing, slipped to eighth overall ($1,000). Big fish honours went to Dave Williams and Scott Manford - they had the only five-pounder among the 890 fish that were weighed-in. (The total weight was 2,292 lbs, an average: 2.57 lbs per fish.) The Floodwaters are a far better bass fishery than the old ABC site, the Turtle-Crowrock-Dashwa chain, so the organizers reduced the daily limit to five fish, and several pairs got caught on the change, bringing in a not-so-fun bag of six fish. Better luck next year! M. McKinnon - Atikokan Progress