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Bass Tournaments


irvingdog

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Lets boil the kettle:

I'm all for equal access, but this last weekend, there was a bass tournament on my lake that made friends with no one.

Why? Why do the hardcore bass boys need/want to hole-shot their giant motors at 6 a.m. to "race" to their favorite spots on a 1600 acre lake? And then, sure as I'm sitting here typing, I get one guy camped out in front of my dock from 6:01 until 11:30. He might have moved maybe 75 feet all morning. He yanked every bass out of the area (and yes, he culled. I watched him). I guess these fish were released alive, but it sure wasn't where he took them from. We waited. He never came back. I'm gonna guess there is a member of his bass club who lives on the lake. And I'm gonna guess the weigh-in is on his dock. And I'm gonna guess the bass fishing is REALLY good off of said dock in a month or so.....

I can't tell you how bad I wanted to send my dog out for a swim with that guy parked there all morning long, but I didn't want to be a jerk. I had some "fisherman/sportsman" allegiance or bond type of thing that prevented me from even letting my kid go for a swim until after his lunch. "Nah", "let him fish" I thought.

But the whole thing just kinda irritated me.

So I guess now I feel like a NIMBY about bass tournaments.

6 am wake up call to the sound of 200 horse outboards being revved all to heck just to cross a half mile of water.

Bad release practices.

Not moving on.........

I'm gonna get flamed; ain't I?

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Yep. I am pretty sure of it. I can understand your frusration, but it is something you kinda have to deal with living on a metro area lake. There are a lot of fishing clubs out there and most members are wanting to keep it closer to home this year with gas prices the way they are. Be happy you can get up and hear the waves lapping at the shoreline, I know I sure would.

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Its a way of life for some people. You have at least 5 days a week to listen to the lake, Cant you just shut the windows or just get up and shut them. As for the fish, They are not most likely being kept. Fish migrate and have been noted to move 2 miles in a day.

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Its a way of life for some people. You have at least 5 days a week to listen to the lake, Cant you just shut the windows or just get up and shut them. As for the fish, They are not most likely being kept. Fish migrate and have been noted to move 2 miles in a day.

Sure it's a way of life; so is living at the lake. The important thing here is the fisherman is breaking the law -- you can't cull from the livewell. The DNR should ticket all those boys on TV as well.

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From Page 8 of the 2008 regulations:

Quote:
• Once a daily or possession limit of fish has been reached, no culling or

live-well sorting is allowed.

If you have less than the legal limit in your livewell, culling is perfectly legal. One of the reasons why most bass tournaments have you weigh your biggest 5 fish.

I don't tournament fish (just not my thing), but they have as much right to be there as you do (as do waterskiiers, waverunners, tubers, etc). Of course, you also have every right to let your kids go swimming off the dock when you want, too.

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For clarification, on page 8 of the fishing regulations it states,

Quote:
Once a daily or possession limit of fish has been reached, no culling or live-well sorting is allowed.

Dang you Ralphy, you beat me to it.

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IF its that small of a lake those bass with migrate back at a league tournament on a small lake we tied a bobber to a fish with a long line and watch to see where it would go. after letting the fish go we following it for 2 hours in had already moved a half of a mile down the shore line. we grab the bobber pulled in the fish and let him go we thought that was a good example of what can happen. granted yes some of those fish will stick around but some move.

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Irving dog I know where your coming from I would be irritated also. So vent away get those frustrations out.

I live on the St.Croix and have to listen to those dang off shore racing boats tooling up and down the river with their loud exhaust, one can almost see the fuel pouring out the exhaust.

Its not as bad this year, I guess they cant afford dumping all that fuel in the river.

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Like others have said...I understand your frustration...just be glad you live where you do. I am stuck in a concrete jungle where I drive 20 minutes to get to the nearest lake.

Be happy with what you have because at one point in your life it's exactly what you wanted.

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Luneyducer, As long as you only have 5 fish in your livewell culling is legal. Please show me the regs if this is not true.

Actually, if you are by yourself and you have 5 fish, it is illegal to cull. You must be 2 fish under the limit to cull. Reason being, as directly out of a CO I've talked to some yrs ago, when you have 5 bass and catching the 6th bass and when you make that decision to keep it or put it in your livewell, you officially have 6 bass in posession, that's a limit, meaning you cannot release(cull) a bass back into the water just to stay at 5 bass. That's why most bass tourny have 2 man to keep this legal whether it be 5 bass or 8 bass.

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Page 11: "Any fish that is caught and will not be utilized must be immediately returned alive back into the water"

and, while not law, page 70: "Don't plan to release fish that have been on a stringer or in a livewell."

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Page 11: "Any fish that is caught and will not be utilized must be immediately returned alive back into the water"

and, while not law, page 70: "Don't plan to release fish that have been on a stringer or in a livewell."

So you quote one sentence of the short paragragh in what that sentence pertains to. So that you understand it instead of reading only the sentence you want to interpret. Your sentence you quoted pertains to wantan waste practices not possesion. Page 11 is not valid for posession purposes otherwise it contradics page 8.

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Strong suggestions, but like it is written, not law. And I believe you have to actually put that 6th fish in the box before it can be deemed "in posession".

Tourney guys do everything in their power to keep their fish alive and well. Even if, for some, the sole reason is to not be penalized at the weigh in for dead fish.

There was a tracking study done by a U of M student on Minnetonka many years ago. He picked random fish from the weigh in and had the angler mark the spot he caught it on a map. He assigned that map a number and installed a corresponding transmitter in the fish.

My memory recalls that after months of tracking, the fish did absolutely nothing predictable. Some scattered, some stayed, some continued to roam through the whole study while others set up shop in a new spot. 1 fish did return to where it was caught and stayed put.

People have their own interpretations of what is acceptable behavior on our public waters. I have mine and I'm sure they aren't always approved of by everyone. But life goes on. I'm just happy to have the freedom to be there.

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People have their own interpretations of what is acceptable behavior on our public waters. I have mine and I'm sure they aren't always approved of by everyone. But life goes on. I'm just happy to have the freedom to be there.

Nicely put......

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Sorry you had a bad day, but those sorts of things are going to happen. It's everyone's lake. Fish move quite a bit and I'm sure your dock will have more around it soon. Then those fish will move again. Sometimes they feel like a dock...sometimes they don't. Also the whole argument over culling for bass tournaments doesn't need to happen. It is legal. The DNR knows how these tournaments are conducted.

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Originally Posted By: looneyducer
Page 11: "Any fish that is caught and will not be utilized must be immediately returned alive back into the water"

and, while not law, page 70: "Don't plan to release fish that have been on a stringer or in a livewell."

So you quote one sentence of the short paragragh in what that sentence pertains to. So that you understand it instead of reading only the sentence you want to interpret. Your sentence you quoted pertains to wantan waste practices not possesion. Page 11 is not valid for posession purposes otherwise it contradics page 8.

It reads what it reads. If you look at the mortality rates of fish released from livewells, you'll understand the position in the wanton waste paragraph.

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Yeah, it reads what it reads. "Any fish that is caught and will not be utilized must be immediately returned alive back into the water" A tournament bass angler is utilizing the fish for tourny purposes while staying under the posession limit. We can twist and spin it however we want, bottom line it's still legal.

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Yeah, it reads what it reads. "Any fish that is caught and will not be utilized must be immediately returned alive back into the water" A tournament bass angler is utilizing the fish for tourny purposes while staying under the posession limit. We can twist and spin it however we want, bottom line it's still legal.

Wait a minute. If I twist it's a bad thing, but if you twist it's grand? What the ... ? The bottom line is the vast majority of those fish are dead -- not right now, but soon -- from the shock of riding around in your livewell. Perhaps that's legal (that has yet to be established), but it certainly isn't ethical; it certainly isn't "right." It makes a clear statement about the incredible value you see in money, and how little you value fish. Why anyone would then call the practice "fishing" is beyond me.

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The bottom line is the vast majority of those fish are dead

I would like to see some data on that statement. I'm sure even the veteran tourney anglers will agree that there is a percentage of those fish that will die, but to say "the vast majority" is a big exageration.

There are good people and not so good people in any activity you do. Most of the "tourney guys" respect the fish just as much or more than average Joe angler.

If you are a witness to a game law that is clearly being broken I encourage you to get on the phone asap and call TIP. I'm sure the "vast majority" of tournament anglers would appreciate you doing that.

It only takes a few bad apples........

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its not like the tourney guys are keepin 13" inch fish to get their limit and then cull they have there own boundries to most of them pay attebtion to what they need to place in the tourney

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The whole culling debate has taken place many times over the past few years in here and the bottom line is always that it is legal the way bass tournaments do it. Since the DNR issues licenses for many of these events one would think that if there was rampant culling abuses taking place that there would have been some enforcement at some point. The fact is that it has not. I'm sure that there are at least a few DNR officials who also bass fish in tournaments as well.

On the other hand, from personal experience I would agree that most bass tournament fisherman take very good care of their fish - I know in our club we have shortened events and had push-off even earlier on extremely hot days so as to not stress the fish so much. Aside from the penalties for dead fish - which in our club also include fish that are alive but won't actively swim away when released - the fish that do not make it are taken home and eaten by someone in the club so they do not go to waste. I also know of at least two tournament boats who released every fish in the live well during the tournament once they discovered a malfunction in their livewells.

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I am primarily a catch and release fisherman. I will keep fish in the winter, but is the summer it is almost exclusively C&R. I have used a livewell to revive stressed fish for release. I see nothing wrong with that. Bass tourneys, Walleye tourneys, they both take big risks in keeping fish alive. I like the way the Muskie guys measure, photo, and release. But I realize that would be difficult to do with the others.

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