Author Topic: If tournaments are your thing, consider this  (Read 580 times)

Offline senkosam

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If tournaments are your thing, consider this
« on: 11/20/24 05:44 UTC »
I've belonged to bass tournament clubs in the past, the primary reason for joining - to fish tournaments. I now only belong to one club that weighs in various species but only one of two at a time: bass and panfish. I don't fish tournaments. It occurred to me in the last ten years that protecting fish should always be the rule whether immediate catch & release or after fish are weighed in. Those who run the tournaments ignore my suggestions and the facts about captive fish before release.

The problem as it concerns immediate release in tournaments is that anglers line up holding bags of fish to be weighed. Rarely do the leaky bags have enough water resulting in fish slime removal and stress on the respiratory system, possibly resulting in delayed mortality. I'm talking 5 or more guys lined up with up to a 15 min. delay before releasing fish. Rarely do anglers keep fish and dump them in the water - some floating dead. ("No big deal", they say; "more food for the turtles")

Seems to me that limits should be set so as to harm as few fish as possible. Instead of 30-40 panfish, have a limit of 6 fish per species, keeping the largest of each species for weigh in.

Allow only three anglers in the line at a time with the next angler getting ready to remove fish from the livewell to put into a bag.

Always drain livewells and leave lids open to dry. It goes without saying that enough water should always be in the livewell prior to fish being stored before weigh-in. I add fresh water at times as well as check aerator bubbles. (Excess water goes out the overfill pipe). The corpses of suffocated fish that were going to be releasee ain't pretty nor seeing those floating dead a day after the tournament.

Avoid fish flopping around on any dry coarse surface which removes the protective slime coat. Handling fish properly should be a priority.

Tournaments are fun if that's your thing, but the downside far too often is the negative effect on fish. The more tournament on a lake, the greater the toll. Maybe the above is overkill (pardon the expression), but I appreciate and I'm in awe of nature, from the beautiful colors of fish to fish that slam my lure on the surface to those that attack my lure many times on the same retrieve. I feel fortunate every time a fish donates ( ;)) its time out of the water for my personal inspection.

Their existence should not be taken for granted.
« Last Edit: 11/20/24 06:02 UTC by senkosam »

Offline Apdriver

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Re: If tournaments are your thing, consider this
« Reply #1 on: 11/20/24 08:40 UTC »
I’m not a tournament guy either. I like the MLF format much better than the keep 5 in the livewell and weigh in at end of day format. All those fish you see at the weigh inns that look like they’ve been ran through a washing machine, red around their mouths and tails and limp as noodles. Not an ounce of fight left in them. Their chances of survival are very slim. JMO.

Offline ctom

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Re: If tournaments are your thing, consider this
« Reply #2 on: 11/20/24 13:03 UTC »
I see a lot of mishandling of fish just about every time I go fishing.  And it's far more common of an issue with the general fishing population than with tournament anglers. If there's a weigh-in involved, dead or injured fish get a deduction so it behooves those anglers to take care of them. And where its catch, picture, release the fish is not out of the water but for mere seconds. In afterthought, even I have mishandled a fish trying to get a picture. Thumbs in small mouths, holding a larger fish horizontally by the jaw, and any number of tools grabbing jaws, the list can go on, but these are things I see when the fish could easily simply be laid in an open hand.
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Offline Lamar

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Re: If tournaments are your thing, consider this
« Reply #3 on: 11/20/24 14:24 UTC »
 I fish bass tournaments. Not as many as I use to but still involved in it. A lot of good info comes from those guys on fish care and habitat for bass to spawn in. Like Tom said we get penalized for a dead fish so we take great care of them. Ice, fizzing and fish stabilizers added to the water. Do fish still die ? Of course some do. It's all part of it. Where the big fish kill comes from are the meat hunters that keep everything they catch, get their limit, clean them and go back out for another limit. There's a lot of that on Lake Erie here in Ohio. On the inland lakes you'll see a pontoon boat on every tree on every bank. You can't tell me they're not keeping everything they catch. And they're using live bait.