Tournaments-Baiting Brush Piles

With the increase amounts of money showing up in tournaments, and the increased pressure to win even the smallest of tournaments the local tournament trials in Florida are concerned with a practice called “Baiting of Brush Piles.” A practice that fisherman is using to attract bait in big piles to small yet hidden brush that eventually attract the bigger bass. The practice baiting is fairly simple; fishermen with perfectly good reasoning are baiting brush with hog feed pellets, horse feed or soybean cakes, even dog food to draw more baitfish and bass.

The problem is there appears to be a mixed bag of folks baiting brush piles! You have the guides that take people fishing with live bait, using the practice to get their customers a big bite, you have biologist working on research attracting bass for research information. All this is fine, except when a fisherman getting ready for a tournament does the same thing; it becomes cheating and forcing even the best of the tournament trails to be concerned. The tournament trails are a mess because of this in Florida; fisherman are quitting some of the tournament trails they have been fishing for years, and the fear of cheating is reeking over the smallest of tournaments. The problem has forced even the smallest tournaments to try and find certified testers to administer lie detector test! The problem is this is costly and it is hard to find certified people!

When issues like this arise in one part of the country, it is always a concern that this practice migrates its way to other parts of the country; like here on Guntersville. Even though I have never heard of this practice going on here I am concerned that this could become an issue going forward. One thing that I have always believed about our local folks is that they are above this nonsense! I would hope this is the case, but we all need to be aware!