Alternative format for bass leagues?

[TonkaBass]

I hear you on that, but I just dont think that changing the style of a weigh in to a measure in will change anything other than make it even easier for people to cheat. Thats my only beef here. I would LOVE to see it mandatory for tournament directors to have "in water" weigh ins. I just think the the measure style vs. the weigh in style should be up to the small clubs. It has no place in money tournaments, and I know you weren't aiming this discussion that direction. I have seen tournaments, and Im not gonna name them, where I had a bad feeling in my gut because of the DUuuuuuuuuu attitude of the tournament directors. To the point of where they should get their position as "weigh master" to "bass killer master". These guys dont care about the fish and they sure wouldnt invest more time and money in water tank to weigh them. For this reason I refuse to fish their tournaments no matter what. I cant support ignorant tournaments run that way. The truth is most are trying their best, and maybe we will see an increase for the measure style. I just wont be fishing them if any big money is involved because some of those smart phone geeks are pretty handy with photoshop

[Craigums]

Maybe Im biased but I think "some" of you guys are underestimating the resiliancy of LM Bass. They are not as fragile as you may think. In our club we do not have a water tank to weight them in. They go from the livewell into the bag with a bit of water for 30 seconds, to a basket for 15 seconds and back into the water. In the 4 years I've been fishing this club I've seen ONE lost fish and it was dead before I even got it to the scale from a hook to deep in the gullet. It was a shame, and I felt bad, but its hardly going to impact the fishery.

[Craigums]

If it bothers any of you that much to see a fish get stressed and have its protective slime touched. then maybe you should quit fishing, join peta, and revive the "sea-kittens" campaign. and then I'll feel sorry for you

[GooBack]

Word!

[GooBack]

Its unfortunate bass are not a renewable resource...and its even worse that so many Mn lakes are underpopulated

[smallie_hawgin]

If it bothers any of you that much to see a fish get stressed and have its protective slime touched. then maybe you should quit fishing, join peta, and revive the "sea-kittens" campaign. and then I'll feel sorry for you

Seriously man...??? Give me a break. We both love bass fishing and even the tournament fishing. Obviously, different opinions on subjects are good... suggestions like that only fuel the argument that "some" folks are a little more "redneck" and resistant to change than we originally thought... Just sayin...

On the resiliency of bass, yeah you're right to some extent...I have worked with and handled many thousands of fish over my career and fish in general are pretty tough, but, you know a club can do better than the status quo. Also, just sayin.... But I forgot... You might be the expert....

[Cecil]

Blah Blah Blah. Too much for me.

I'm going to Sturgeon Bay in 4 days. So....I win!

[Craigums]

Blah Blah Blah. Too much for me.

I'm going to Sturgeon Bay in 4 days. So....I win!

Not a bad idea, Ive got 4 more hours in my cube before I can get the boat out so Im a little on edge

[TonkaBass]

Sounds like you're doing it right in your club then Craigums, but you should see some of those weigh ins on the 90 degree days when they don't make sure it is done fast... Its not that we're peta people, its that we're concerned about it because make no mistake lake shore associations will put up a fuss if they see belly's floating, and they have A LOT of power.

[TurnUpTheFishing]

Maybe Im biased but I think "some" of you guys are underestimating the resiliancy of LM Bass. They are not as fragile as you may think. In our club we do not have a water tank to weight them in. They go from the livewell into the bag with a bit of water for 30 seconds, to a basket for 15 seconds and back into the water. In the 4 years I've been fishing this club I've seen ONE lost fish and it was dead before I even got it to the scale from a hook to deep in the gullet. It was a shame, and I felt bad, but its hardly going to impact the fishery.

I think you're not understanding what some of us dont like to see at weigh ins...

What you describe is completely acceptable, at least in my eyes. Sounds like you're part of a good club. Its the situations like RK described, or situations where guys stand around with 15lbs of fish in a bag with a gallon of water while they watch the weigh in and talk.

[Craigums]

Newest issue of InFisherman talks about how bass are far more resiliant than once thought. Some fish surviving up to 13 minutes out of water! I think with a little bit of care and common sense there is no reason to be afraid of live weigh-ins

which brings me back to this. a little education in proper fish handling is better than admonishing live weigh-ins imo.

[goblueM]

IMO tv shows should be doing a lot more to promote good fish handling. Nothing like watching a TV personality crank on a bass's jaw while holding it up out of the water for a 2 minute monologue

[RK]

Hiya -

I think if you're going to argue that sub-standard procedures for weigh-ins are ok because 'fish are tougher than we think' you've got a small mountain of research on not only post-tournament mortality but general fish physiology stacked against you.

What I don't think gets recognized often enough in these kinds of discussions is the cumulative nature of the stressors fish undergo.

When fish are caught, lactic acid builds up in their muscle tissues. LA build up is a stressor, but not a fatal one on its own. Given the right environment, they can metabolize that lactic acid and be none the worse for wear. But metabolizing it requires significant oxygen. When they're put in a livewell, the water for the livewell is taken from at or near the surface where the water is warmest, and water's ability to carry dissolved oxygen is inversely proportional to temperature. The warmer the water, the lower the DO. Placing fish in a high CO2/Low DO environment is in itself a stressor. Then put fish already stressed to some degree into a bag with water that becomes anoxic almost immediately... Add in other stressors like contusions from transport in rough water or handling (the last tournament I fished was on Leech, and after coming across the big lake from Boy Bay in rough water the bass in our livewell looked like they'd been scaled from getting scraped by dorsla spines on the other fish), skeletal/muscular damage that affect respiration like gill arch damage from a steep angle lip hold... Any of the stressors that a caught, transported and weighed fish encounters may be sub-fatal in isolation, but the cumulative effects, depending on duration and intensity, can and have pretty definitively been shown to increase delayed mortality post-release - in multiple studies with multiple formats, and with multiple species... Anyone who argues otherwise is kidding themselves.

I'm not saying a tournament-caught fish is a dead fish - that's obviously not the case. But what I am saying is a lot of the things that occur do increase the odds for delayed mortality, and those things are compounded by a shoddy weigh in process at the end of it.

Nor am I saying all tournaments handle fish badly. I've seen great weigh-ins at large and small scale events. But there are horror shows too. One of the architects of the AIM format was Gary Parsons, and when I talked to him about it, he said one of the main reasons he pushed the idea is he was sick of releasing fish he knew had low chances of survival. As he put it "when the fish in my livewell at the beginning of a weigh in are so wild I can barely catch them, and barely swimming afterwards...something has to change." And that, as I said before, was at PWT tournaments where their fish handling system was so elaborate it took a semi to haul it from one event to the next.

As I also said before, to me it's a pretty simple ethical issue. If you're going to pat yourself on the back by saying you released all the fish, it's an empty gesture unless you take reasonable steps to make sure they survive. It's pointless if the cumulative stressors cause delayed mortality after the fact. Belly up in the livewell, or turtle food on the bottom 3 days later, dead's dead. And the causes of increased delayed mortality are pretty well understood, and have been for quite a while.

Craigums...the go join PETA argument doesn't fly. We're still talking about fishing here, and reductio ad absurdum isn't an argument, it's a fallacy.

Frankly I want to see survival rates as high as possible out of selfishness more than anything else. I want my fish to survive so I can catch them again. I want yours to survive so I can catch them, too.

Someone earlier on mentioned not liking total length events and catching an 18 and a 20, then getting beaten by trio of 13s. That's why AIM went to a weight/length table. Granted, not all 18 inchers weigh the same, but in the grand scheme of things, it becomes a wash - your 18 might have been 3 oz heavier than the other guys, but his 15 might have been 3 ounces less than yours too... All in all, a weight/length table is a level playing field. And from what the AIM guys tell me, cheating is just about impossible. If your photos don't fit the requirements, the fish doesn't count, so there isn't much room for ambiguity on the measurements.

Anyhow, I really hope I'm not coming off as anti-tournament or anti weigh-in as I probably am. That's not my intent, or my honest opinion. But I do think there are alternatives out there that are fair, viable and pretty well established. I also do think there are definitely improvements to be made in how fish are handled at all levels. Some organizations have farther to go than others...

RK

[Superduty]

I think RK has some valid concerns that all tournament fisherman need to consider. I think it is great that you have pointed out stressors that aren't necessarily in the forefront of a tournament fisherman's brain. I have a fishery background as well but life and career have steered me away from it since my college days. I have witnessed the accumulation of stressors kill fish at weigh-ins. Usually spawn events with extreme heat the day of the tournament are the worst. The rigors of spawning/guarding, livewell rides, low oxygen, cull tags, and finally the increase in water temp is a bad combination for fish survival. I am as far from anti-tournament as it gets. I am just competitive by nature. I can't help it. The OP's length system is something small clubs should consider when trust is high and money is low. Big money events still need a real weigh-in. It isn't the end of the world if some fish die. It's a renewable resource for the most part. Let's just be smart about it to help protect the future of tournament fishing.

[grab the net]

It would appear to me that AIM went to a measure standard to be able to fish some slot lakes and as a public relations ploy to gain the publics trust that they care for the fishery and tournaments can be as fish friendly as possible. At the end of the day they are still just LM and SM bass, they are not muskies for heavens sake. Remember that if this cool

down we will be experiencing soon, put the bass off spawn til next weekend the opener, ethically we should all look for lakes that are either post spawn or pre-spawn, to ethically protect the resource, even though it will be legal, will it truly be ethical to fish next weekend?

[hockeybc69]

If we want to debate fishing for spawning fish, lets take that to another topic.

This is about handling of fish in tournaments.

Good discussions.

[TonkaBass]

RK, once again I have learned something from you. I'll be honest, I didn't realize how all the stress a fish goes through during a day compound on each other like that. I do add ice and please release me formula to my livewell whenever I store fish I intend to release, but I have wondered often the beating they take during long rough runs. Last year I had some fish in my livewell that looked fine at the end of the day, but they DESTROYED my livewell! The screen protectors were all busted up and dented. I couldn't believe it. Common sense goes a long ways in trying to keep fish healthy, and most do all they can. I highly recommend a catch and release formula. That stuff works. And so does ice during a hot summer day. I have heard that its best to make your own from the actual lake water, but I haven't seen it kill any fish if it was store bought either. I hate putting cull tags in fish, but its one of those things that you just have to do. Tournaments are fast paced and cull tags save valuable time sorting fish. The main thing that I think would greatly help the fish is if they were weighed in a tank of water. Its a no brainer! Also fast, accurate weighins would result. None of this, "she wont stop jumping around" "these ones are wild, I cant get the scale to rest." As they are wrapped in a dry plastic bag for 5 mins and others are waiting in line too. I agree, something should be done and I'm ALL for a wet weighin!

[RK]

Hiya -

Tonka - great examples of the kinds of things that can mitigate the stressors. A good livewell system, ice, Rejunenade or whatever that Bass Medics stuff is...

Not rocket science, and not a huge hassle, but can make a pretty significant difference in survival nad how fast they recover. The banging around in a livewell is a tough one though. I've always thought a full well helped because it sloshed less, but who knows.

Cool discussion...

RK

[Jim Hudson]

Problem is, in the future, if folks continue down the road of status quo for league, tournaments, etc, you will see state agencies become more reluctant on giving permits, unless there are changes to weigh-in formats.

More people recreation fish than they do tournament fish. Recreation fisherman and most biologists are not blind to what goes on during those middle of the summer, heat of the day, weigh-ins.

Changing the philosophy is not only good for the re-capture moments of fish throughout a system, but the overall "look" of tournament fishing. Putting a fish back in the water after recording its length is much more benefical to the fishery and the "look" of tournaments, IMO..

FYI - I have nothing against tournaments, as some of my best friends are HUGE tournament folk. But I do guide a lot of recreation folks who absolutely HATE tournaments, and a reason they come to the body of water I guide on, as we have no tournaments on bass.