AIM & CRR

[gunflint]

I just watched an interview with Keith Kavajecz on the new Pro walleye league AIM. It looks interesting. They have 3 events so far and are trying to get a 4th lined up for somewhere in Minnesota. The new weigh-in system will be CRR Catch, Record, and Release. He said that the advantages of the new weigh in system include less fish handling and the ability to fish all day then using your best 5 fish for the weigh in.

They will give the anglers (a pro with a co-angler) a measuring stick and a digital camera every day. Each fish will be CRRed and returned to the water. Sounds interesting. I wonder if this new weigh-in system works, will more tourneys go that route?

[goose89]

Very interesting. What channel / show did you see that on. I'd like to see it if they run it again. My first thought, which for me is usually wrong, is how many more doors are being opened up for dishonest tourny anglers (not that there are any). I'd like to know what kind of "anti-cheating" measures they've got built in.

I can think of a couple possible scenarios right away. I do like the CRR idea, esp. for warm water situations. Are you penalized for bringing in a dead / injured fish (guthooked).??

It may be for the best, but it takes away some of the hard decisions / strategy (keep mediocre fish early?? keep the last one, or go for something bigger, what size is gonna be your minimum.) I'm not complaining about that, just would be a different mindset going in. Looking forward to see how AIM does.

[gunflint]

Keith and Gary Parsons have a web site that has the interview. Policy prevents me from mentioning it.

[LOTWSvirgin]

Them there digital cameras dont float to well I dont suppose?

[Chode2235]

Look at what the unmotorized tournament circuit is doing for their CPR tournaments. Esentially they provide you a ruler, and sometimes a camera. Your job is to take a picture of your fish on the ruler, then let it go. You then turn in your SD card at the end of the day.

Seems to work for them, and they have a lot less sophistication than these pro walleye guys.

[Mille Lacs Guy]

The way the try to prevent treating is by having the co-angler in the boat monitoring that the pro isn't taking a picture of the same fish several times and is measuring accurately. In the past the co-anglers were also competing for money. With CRR the co-anglers can only win prizes from a drawing, so they are not competing and wouldn't be inclined to cheat to help themselves in the standings. This was important to take the co-anglers out of the competition so there wouldn't be cheating with measurements, etc. The way that AIM looked at it was that your finish as a co angler has traditionally been determined by what pros you draw and if they are on fish, the finish of the co-angler didn't really measure the skill of the co-angler. So they determined that having a drawing for prizes would suffice.

I'm looking forward to this new system and hope to possibly fish a MN or WI event as a co-angler.

Dan Jochum

NPAA #269