He'll joke and banter with each of tonight's teams over the next half hour, inspecting their live- wells ( bass tournaments are all catch- and- release) and lecturing them, with a smile, about adding ice to avoid killing the fish. Most of the teams he knows well. The rest will not be strangers long. Randy McIlrath never met a stranger. The construction contractor runs a dozen night tournaments every year, tonight on behalf of the Monterey Bass Company out of Phoenix. Entry fees for the Monterey Bass Company tournaments, which are fairly typical for night tournaments in the region, run from $ 80- 250, depending on how many options ( separate contests) you enter. Top winners usually walk away with checks just over a thousand dollars. Night fishing is widely practiced in the warmer states of the union, but few places have formed the communal cult around the practice like those in the central deserts of Ari-zona. " This stems from the seniors," McIlrath explains. " They liked it so much. Their [ night] event is one of the largest tournaments in Arizona, and even that was down." Darkness

He says that last year he ran night tournaments with 70 boats, " but now, I'll be lucky if we get thirty." ( Tonight's total will be twenty- five). John New, owner of The Hook- Up, which sponsors or supports most of the Lake Pleasant night tournaments, confirms this. " Most of these night derbies will aver-age, I'd say, twenty- five to thirty- five boats. I think it's kind of decreasing. With gas prices, I think you're seeing less people come out; less people in general. You know, a lot of the bass fishermen are construction guys. And with the downturn in the market there, you're starting to see, you know, a little less turn- out." The other unavoidable fac-tor is that fishing this June is, well, bad. No one agrees on a single reason for this: water temperatures, a surplus of bait fish, simply more water per fish ( most of the reser-voirs are at or near capacity this June) - but they all agree the fish aren't biting. " If fishing was good, which it isn't – yet – at night, it would probably take twelve to thirteen pounds to be in the money. But with fishing the way it is right now, twelve or thirteen pounds will win a tournament. To give you an idea, last summer, when fishing was pretty good, it would take close to twenty pounds to win. It seems like fishing has been off this year, slow to get started, pretty much nationwide. I know the state of Arizona has definitely had a slow start. Usually by June we've got a tremendous top- water bite going. And it's just now starting, and we're already at the 20th," New explains. Tournament director Randy McIlrath