Addictive Fishing's Blair Wiggins Hosted the Inaugural FLA BanquetBack in the summer of 2003 a handful of Jacksonville area anglers met at Dick's Wings on Beach Boulevard to lay the groundwork for what has become the nation's premiere inshore saltwater fishing club - the Florida Lure Anglers. Since those humble beginnings the club has grown to over 100 members strong, has produced several winners on different pro-level fishing tours, became the first Redfish Nation sanctioned fishing club, supported conservation and charity efforts on a local and national level, worked with sponsors within and outside the fishing industry, and promoted the sport of fishing to the public, friends, and family alike.
Carl Hardy was the club's first president and he played an integral role in the founding of the FLA. Carl was a founder of the popular Inshore Saltwater Anglers fishing club of Jacksonville and had helped that organization grow into a great club that is still thriving today. He was also a regular on the IFA Redfish Tour and had garnered several sponsors along the way - which shaped his belief that an artificial lures only fishing club was the way of the future. In addition to bringing the framework for setting up the club through his experience with the Inshore Saltwater Anglers, Carl also used his contacts within the fishing industry to establish the club's first sponsorships and used his excellent oratory skills to run our meetings.
The club's first vice president was Fred Grey who along with Carl conceived the idea of the FLA club. Fred had organized several calcutta style tournaments through his involvement on the Florida Sportsman online fishing forum and also saw the need for a competitive outlet for local anglers that exceeded his casual Saturday morning pick-up games.
With Fred's online network of anglers and Carl's influence in the ISA club and Redfish Tour, the founders of the club were selected and the organization process began with several meetings during the summer of 2003. The original board of directors were Cliff Vaughn, Bob Morris, Herb Payne, Charlie Newton, and Randy Hartley. JD Nobles stepped up as tournament director, Terry Sturgeon was membership director, Brian Dreisbach was treasurer, and Ginny Hartley filled in as secretary. Wendell Nolan and Ken Weinstein were also present at many of those initial meetings and offered valuable feedback to the club's founders.
The format was set as a lures only challenge where anglers would target our local "slam" species of redfish, trout, and flounder in a 10 tournament season starting in September. A points structure was put in place and all dues collected would be paid back to the top standing anglers at year's end. This was a groundbreaking idea of sorts since it rewarded a member's consistency over the course of the year as opposed to a single tournament (an idea some of the pro tours should adopt in my opinion) and a true champion could be crowned in one of the most challenging formats in fishing. Nowhere else will you target a variety of species in a variety of formats using artificial lures only. Members of the FLA have become some of the country's best all around tournament anglers which was one of the founder's original goals.
To add to the challenge, the schedule included launches from Jacksonville, Fernandina, and St. Augustine along with travelling tournament stops in Oak Hill and Cedar Key. To keep anlgers on their toes, the formats were always different, ranging from 5 trout to the red/trout/flounder slam to 2 flounder. We also elected to allow anglers to drop their 2 worst finishes from their annual points total in case they had to miss an event or could not travel out of town.
The club's original format was for an individual angler - if you fished as a team, each person got the same amount of points based on the boat's catch for the day. This flexibility was important for the growth of the club - while some members fished alone or with a variety of partners, others elected to make a team for the year. In addition to tournament points, members also got points for meeting attendance and the live release of fish. This was another unique feature of the club which was pushed for by Carl and myself in particular to address conservation concerns. The Florida Lure Anglers is still the only tournament organization that both penalizes for dead fish brought to the scales and rewards for live release. We are proud that we took these steps to insure our members take extreme measures to keep their fish alive to fight another day.
Another goal of the club was to promote the sport to women and children who many times seem to be left out when it comes to fishing which is perceived as a male dominated pursuit. We adopted the motto "building tomorrow's anglers, today" to encompass that philosophy. Fellowship among anglers was another point of importance so the founders focused special attention on our monthly meetings and the year end banquet where Carl used his industry network to reel in Blair Wiggins of the Addictive Fishing tv show to be our guest speaker. The club has also done its part to aid others through charitable contributions over the years by making donations to a variety of causes.
Of course, the club mainly is about fishing and you can look back and see some of the areas top anglers in our tournament archives. Here are our first year's individual tournament winners: http://www.flafishingclub.com/archives/tour_results_03_04.htm
The Angler of the Year awards for the 2003-2004 season were as follows:
1st place = JD Nobles
2nd place = Randy Hartley
3rd place = Wade Hastings
4th place = Dusty Nobles
5th place = Ken Weinstein
6th place = Ken Hicks
7th place = Scott Ludden
8th place = Bob Morris
9th place = Scott Obrien
10th place = Heather Isbell
Junior Angler = Logan Warren
Lady Angler = Heather Isbell
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