Wow. No word yet

I gotta tell you. I’m surprised that the winners of Cabela’s  “Fish for Millions” tagged fishing contest are having to wait this long to find out who won what…apparently there were quite a few tagged fish caught and determining the prize order is complicated.  I have not been able to even find out when the winners will be announced. I did make three calls to the company’s corporate offices, but never got through to the right people and my calls were not returned. I even played the “outdoor writer” card to try and find out WHEN we might know. I had about as much luck with that as I did catching a tagged fish. NADA.

Can you imagine if Cabela’s Thomas L. Milner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the mega-company, went to a casino, spun the lucky million dollar wheel — and bam! —  the lights flash, bells and whistles go off and the dancing girls parade out holding a blank check. Then they tell him “YOU WON!, but we’ll have to let you know what you won when we sort it all out… Check back on our website… it may be a while.”

Well, that’s kind of what Jason Williams of Farmerville must be feeling like. Jason caught a tagged fish – a largemouth bass – on Lake D’Arbonne several weeks ago. The contest ended at midnight this past Sunday. Top prizes include up to a million in cash or a new truck or a new boat. If all 1,500 tagged fish were caught, you might only win a pair of fancy sunglasses. The more tagged fish caught, the more luck of the draw you are facing…

To be fair, there probably were quite a few tagged fish caught and there is a “lottery” type system in place to determine winners. It may take a few days.

How many winning fish were caught in the 2013 contest? Probably more than we would imagine. In the initial contest in 2011, there were 143 winning fish caught. I wouldn’t have bet there would have been that many.

In 2012, 118 out of 1,000 tagged fish were caught.  This year there were 1,500 fish tagged in 00 lakes across 22 states – Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin – and every tagged fish caught will be a winner. That’s all we know right now — be it a million dollars or a fancy pair of sunglasses.

I was able to find out that last year there were two winners for the Ranger Boats.  One was a crappie caught from Cedar Bluff Reservoir in Kansas. The other was a walleye from Lake Thompson, S. Dakota. Cabela’s apparently does not release the full names of the winners to protect their identity (from the IRS or new-found relatives, I guess….)

There are a lot of people pulling for Jason, but for now we’ll just have to be patient. They will figure it out. And when they let Jason know, we’ll let you know . . .