Amen brother. Another interesting note is that I just saw a statistic in In-fisherman magazine that the amount of bass fishing hours spent in this part of the country is decreasing and has been for some time. I believe the younger generation isn't taking to hunting and fishing like the older generations did. But the amount of time spent on tournament fishing has surely not decreased. They are being held year round now and have steadily increased over the past 10 - 15 years in both frequency and size. That means there has been a shift of people spending more of their bass fishing time on tournaments than for pleasure which is easy to see following posts on this board. Some folks seem to only fish because their are tournaments.

Even though I tend to get a bit excitable over tournaments and their impacts I fundamentally don't have a problem with tournament fishing. It is the unchecked growth that I have the biggest problem with and things only stand to get worst. I believe wildlife organizations like KDFW know these trends and actually try to promote tournaments to cater to a "growing segment of fishermen". I just wish they would step up and study the impacts of tournaments on the fishery and make adjustments in their management strategy to compensate.


kc