American Bass Anglers, a fishing tournament organization based in Alabama, is getting some backlash from fishermen who claim they haven’t been paid their proper winnings.
Several anglers who fished an ABA military tournament this spring say their prize checks bounced, and according to WAFF-48, those fishermen are still waiting to get paid. That includes the tourney’s winners, who were looking at a $1,900 payout for their first-place finish.
“They never reached out to me after that return check; I actually reached out to them,” Rick Bradley, who placed second in the tourney and was owed around $400, told the local news outlet Thursday. Bradley also said, however, that the ABA had contacted him to confirm his address and make sure another check would go to the right place.
The ABA’s president, Morris Sheehan, released an official statement that same day and chalked up the problem to a banking error. Sheehan explained that an “unexpected system issue resulted in some tournament payout checks not clearing as intended,” and he assured anglers that they were working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Outdoor Life reached out to the ABA Friday for comment but did not hear back by press time.
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But Slick Johnson, an influencer (and instigator) in the competitive bass-fishing space, says the ABA’s payment problem goes back further than the most recent military tournament. In a video he posted to Facebook Friday, Johnson claimed this issue has been going on for months.
“They’re taking money from the anglers … about 90 percent of the checks are bouncing,” Johnson alleges in his video. “There’s people that have been [waiting for] two months. When it happened at Eufala, [we] thought it was a one-time thing when all the checks bounced … Several of those checks cleared, but some still haven’t.”
The Military Team Bass Tournament that Bradley and others competed in was held on West Point Lake in LaGrange, Georgia, from April 30 to May 2. Johnson claimed in the video that, according to the anglers who fished that tournament and have since contacted him, there was around $8,800 paid to the ABA (mostly through entry fees) for that event.
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“They only paid out like $4,000-something, but every one of those [checks] bounced,” Johnson said. “They’re saying, ‘Well, we’re waiting to get money from this city so that we can pay the payouts and make the checks.’ But I’m getting calls every single day [from] people who aren’t getting paid.”
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