Keeping
bass alive and healthy also leads us into the next hot topic I’ve seen on
social media and have been asked personally. That topic is the use of
Culling Systems or Cull Tabs. For those of you that don’t know what these
are, they are basically a colored and/or numbered float that is attached to a
line, cable or chain with a clip or hook on the other end. The clip or
hook is then attached to a bass’ mouth before you put them in the
livewell. They are used by tournament anglers to keep track of the
size/weight of each bass they have caught. Once the angler gets a limit
of bass these tabs make it easy to cull their catch. When a bass is
caught and determined to be bigger than
one in the livewell, the angler can
quickly find and remove the smaller bass. Just like with livewells these cull systems have improved over time. The first ones to come out really caused
a lot of damage to the bass’ mouth. Some of this damage was to the point
that the bass was unlikely to survive for very long once released. I’m
happy to report that today there are some cull systems out there designed to
not damage the bass’ mouth. I’ve tried a few of these newer systems and
it is true they don’t damage the bass’ mouth but most of them also don’t stay
attached to larger bass very well. The one system I believe that works
best and I’m currently using is the Clip N Cull from Cal Coast Fishing. If you take an
extra second to position the clip right in the bass’ mouth and lock it
correctly they stay put even on big bass as you can see from the
pictures. The Clip N Cull do not damage the bass’ mouth and their float
system makes it very easy to track and find the right bass when it comes time
to cull. 
One
of the new trends I’ve seen and been asked about is the new Catch, Picture and
Release (CPR) tournaments. These were started mostly by Bank and Kayak
fishermen since keeping fish in their tournaments just is not practical as they
don’t have a good method of keeping their fish alive. It also opens up
aspects of Online Internet tournaments even for boat fishermen. I just
finished
competing in my first CPR online tournament this past month. It
was the Crème Lures “King of Staff” tournament that was open to all Crème Lures
Pro Staff. It was a lot of fun and knowing I was competing against other Pro
Staff members from all over the country made it very interesting. For these
CPR tournaments the fish’s length is measured on a bump board and a picture is
taken to be submitted to the tournament director. Most online tournaments allow
you to fish any body of water of your choosing. Just like the King of
Staff tournament I fished, you can be competing against folks from all over the
country. That is very cool but it opens up all kinds of cheating
possibilities as well, another subject that deserves its own paragraph later. I
do know that when possible I’ll be fishing more of these online CPR tournaments
in the future.
Releasing
each bass back very near to where it was caught in all tournaments would be an
awesome improvement. This is especially true when tournaments are held
during the spawning season. It is my opinion that there shouldn’t be any
tournaments held during the spawning season. Why you might ask? All those
big bass full of eggs that are about ready to spawn are pulled away from their
beds and released sometimes many miles away. Now I’m not sure exactly
what happens after the bass is released, if it survives does it try to return
to its original mate and bed or does it look for a new mate and build a new bed
in a different location. In any event it has to be disruptive to their
spawning process and potentially damaging to the body of water’s bass
population to some extent. This would especially be true if these
fish come from a river system where the fish would have to fight miles of
current to get back to their spawning location. Along these same lines is
one of my personal pet peeve in regards to this discussion. It is when
the bass weighed in aren’t returned to body of water they were caught.
You will see this happen a lot when weigh-ins aren’t held at the body of water
for some type of advertising or promotional event. There is also the rare
case where a tournament angler makes an extremely long run to fish.
This
happened a couple of years ago when the BASS Elite Series was on the Sabine
River. Pro Mike McClelland ran down the Sabine River to the Inter-coastal
Waterway. He took the Inter-coastal to Galveston Bay and then ran up into
Clear Creek Bayou to fish. This took him a 2 hour boat ride in both
directions, but the tactic served him well as he finished 2nd in the
tournament. However all the bass he caught out of Clear Creek Bayou were
released into the Sabine River. Why should I care that this happened? The
reason I care is Clear Creek Bayou is one of the systems we fish in the Bayou
Bassin’ League. Now 15 prime bass, likely prime spawners have been
removed and transplanted into another body of water. That just doesn’t
set well with me, sorry!
Along
the same lines of Fishing Etiquette is posting fishing reports on social
media. I do it a lot as I like to help other folks catch more and bigger
fish. This doesn’t set well with some folks and I’ve recently been
attacked on social media for trying to give other folks help. These
people do not want you disclosing any fishing locations or methods as they
think they own bodies of water or certain spots on a lake, river or
stream. I have news for those type of people, no one owns any public
waters and if someone wants to disclose the location and method they used to
catch fish, then more power to them. There was a time when fellow fishermen
helped each other. Locals provided fishing reports to the newspapers and
everyone was friendly on the water. It is really sad where we have come
to in this aspect.
Something
else in the realm of etiquette is another trend that seems to be growing and
that is cheating in tournaments. Maybe it isn’t a growing trend and it is
more folks are being caught or more reporting of these incidents is more widely
spread. Either way I just don’t understand what drives someone to
cheat. I guess I don’t understand tournament cheaters just like I don’t
understand thieves and liars. I compete in tournaments to see how I fair
against other anglers. Sure it is great to win and get the trophies and
prizes but what are they really worth if you have to cheat to get them?
To me they would just be meaningless if I didn’t earn them myself. I just
hope that karma in some way takes care of anyone that cheats and doesn’t get
caught.
One
more etiquette related subject that seems to be more prevalent or more widely
noticed these days is “Smack Talking”. It might be more widely noticed
because everyone so interconnected on social media. There was always some smack
talk that happened in groups of friends, clubs and even bigger tournament
series. However it happened in the background and was more in fun than
anything else, but in these days you see it happening on social media for all
the world to see. I think anyone that fishes tournaments is guilty of a little
smack talk from time to time, I know I am but I’m not so sure posting it on
social media is a good thing. For the most part I know it really is no
harm meant, but it has led to some heated encounters on the water over the
years. It may also give fans of some fishermen the wrong impression of
them as well, especially if that fisherman is doing it on social media. I don’t
think it will ever stop, heck I don’t know that I can stop, but I will try very
hard not to post any smack talk on social media.
One
of the other things I am very pleased to see is the numbers of people now getting
involved with tournament fishing. Heck the level of competition today is
10 times what it was back when I started out. Even at the local Bass Club
level there are a lot of very good fishermen. Now with High Schools and
Colleges having Bass Teams competing, the level of
competition is getting higher with each day. Heck I wish there were Bass
Fishing Teams when I was growing up! I tell you no matter the tournament,
location or level you are fishing you will be competing against some great
fishermen.
Well
there you have it folks, some of my thoughts, opinions and plain ramblings from
my many years of tournament fishing. In closing I hope this has given
each of you some food for thought. I also want to wish each of you much luck in
your tournament fishing.
Until
next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!
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