Last I heard was 4 qualifiers, and you must attend at least 3 of the 4 to get into the championship.
I understand this is all just in the planning phase so who knows what it will be. However I think it might be a bad choice to follow this format for the second year.
I think the biggest obstacle they had for participation this year was a lot of people had commitments or loyalty to some other existing tournaments and its just hard for many to find the time to do them all.
Given this, I am not sure why you would add another tournament or qualifier until you can bring up the participation in the originals. I think people like the team of the year or point system that connects all the tournaments however the more qualifiers you have to more commitment it takes for each team to make it to all the events. If they can only make it to two of the qualifiers and that eliminates them from the championship and also realistically takes them out of the team of the year race, what's the point in doing the AIM vs just doing the existing tournaments already in place for years.
To simplify it just seems like its too soon to expand.
The only positive twist I think you could put on this is if you did something like the following
1.) 4 qualifiers - 2 on west side of state, 2 on east side of state
2.) Need to fish only two qualifiers to fish the championship
3.) championship rotates east and west location
I think you are really limiting participation from anyone on the east side if your having 5 events and 4 of them are on the MO system.