Quote Originally Posted by bullmerc View Post
When a bass tourney is held on public waters which your and my taxes pay for I don't think anyone owns a spot. I used to back off when someone said they were fishing a tourney and they ask if I would let them fish the spot.

Now with a tournament being held about every day of the week on about every body of water I will not back off any longer. If I find a spot that is holding fish and someone from one of the thousands of tournaments ask to fish I tell them to follow me if they want but don't cut me off.

Tournaments have gotten far to frequent on our bodies of waters and it is hurting our fishery. We used to go to Kentucky and Barkley and get into several HUGE bass every spring, not anymore. If you are lucky you might catch a five or a six but this is about the limit. I personally took 1 bass over 10 pounds out of Barkley and 2 over 9 pounds in one spring season back in the early 90's. This was not a freak this was what happened about every spring back then before we were bombarded with tournaments.

I was down there a couple weeks ago and there was 2 large tournaments that had almost 500 boats in them combined and this was not counting the several dozen local and club tournaments being held all over both lakes which probably added another 400 to 500 more boats. The poor casual fisherman out for a day with his kids or grandkids is an annoyance to these "cash for cashers". I have also noticed that the more tournaments that are held the more obnoxious the "cast for cashers" get with the casual fisherman.

I know everyone is entitled to use our bodies of water but with the massive increase of tournaments and the unquestionable number of bass that die from these tournaments why don't the state put more control on these practices. With an over-abundance of small fish in the lakes now how many will never see the 15 inch size limit after being hooked many times?????????????

One other thing I have noticed is that a lot of out of staters are bringing their tournaments to Kentucky, wonder why?????????????
I don't think tournaments are hurting our fisheries. G-ville is one of the most pressured tournament lakes around and they were catching over 200 fish a day with over 100 of them being keeper sized fish. I would back off in a heart beat if a FLW or BASS angler fishing a tournament asked me to fish a spot. I mean this is what they do for a living and they are fishing for $100,000 +. Now I probably wouldn't do that for a weekend tournament fisherman because I wouldn't expect them to do it for me because I'm not doing it for a living. Big difference