FantasyFishing.com gained immediate notice back in 2008 by offering and paying out a $1 million grand prize in its first season of operation. The company gave another $1 million to the winner last summer.

This year’s winner shouldn’t make such big spending plans.

The 2010 incarnation of FLW’s Fantasy Fishing announced this week a $50,000 top prize. Unsurprisingly, the news release doesn’t make any mention of the past prize amounts.

The game has always been free to play, so there’s certainly no room for anyone to complain about the smaller prize package, and creator Irwin Jacobs said from the start that the game never aimed to be an income source.

“We don’t expect to make money on the fantasy fishing game,” Jacobs, the founder of FLW Outdoors, told FSB.com in October 2008.

Instead, fantasy fishing was developed to bring attention and a new audience to the pro fishing tour. With that in mind, a change in the prize structure was likely bound to come.