Anglers from around the nation turned their eyes toward Greenville, South Carolina from February 22-24th for the 2008 Bassmaster Classic, the bass fishing extravaganza.  It’s held by BASS, the organization dedicated to the sport of bass fishing.  The show is produced by Carpathia, a production company headed by Larry Ganson, and built by Production Plus.

The Bass set.

“Every year since we’ve been on board, the show has gotten bigger and better,” says Ganson, when asked about how the show has changed over the six years and seven Bassmaster Classics under his belt.  “Production Plus and I have done the show since Bass was purchased by ESPN in 2002.  To be honest, I couldn’t do the show without them.”

The show had humble beginnings.  According to the BASS/ESPN website, the first Classic, held on Lake Mead near Las Vegas, Nevada, awarded a winner-take-all paycheck of $10,000 and was witnessed by a straggling handful of spectators. It’s grown to a spectacle for tens of thousands of people who cram into coliseums to watch daily weigh-ins of the big fish.  $1,194,500 is awarded to the top anglers — $500,000 of which goes to the champion.  For bass anglers, this is the equivalent of Oscar night.  “Every year, ESPN and Bass comes to us really excited and they walk away with their expectations not only met, but exceeded,” says Ganson.  “After the show every single year they’re blown away by the high-quality show we are able to produce–seamless, within budget, everything.”

Seamless and high-quality are always a goal when working on any show.  A few elements of the Bassmaster show make this especially tricky.  For one, the actual fish have to be alive and healthy for the duration of the show.  Bass, the organization, has a strict catch-and-release policy for all competitive anglers.  So, in order to present the fish for weighing at the event, the anglers drive their Toyota trucks into the arena with their boats in tow. Special holding tanks built into the boats called “live wells” house the fish.  Then, all the fish are put into a huge pool of water in the arena where they live peacefully for the three days of the show.  After they are weighed, they go back in the trucks and back to the wild.  “It’s tricky,” confesses Ganson.  “But Production Plus and I are at the point where we’ve got it down.”

It’s relationships like the one with Ganson and Bassmasters that keeps Production Plus striving for better and better service, craftsmanship, and execution.  Pro Plus looks forward to an even bigger and better show in 2009.

An explosive moment at the Classic - the trophy is given to a new champion angler.