And the fact that you guys release your fish right way after measuring is impressive.
Actually that is very common practice at the amatuer level of tournament fishing that I do, we draw for partners and your partner verifys the length and the fish is released. This is the norm on most of the club tournement fishing around here. There are close to 30 clubs that are affiliated with the NE BASS Federation, most of them practice this type of paper tournament all the time, having a live weigh in requires a lot of work to set up.
It is primarily in the bigger money tournements that people enter that live weigh ins occur, these are mostly at the professionally level, these usually occur on very large resevoirs. Even us amatuers at the larger events will have a live weigh ins once a year. The NE BASS Federation State Tournament rotates between Lake of the Ozarks, Truman Resevoir, Grand Lake of the Cherokees, and Table Rock. I can tell you that finding and locating LMBs on big resevoirs like that is a whole different ball game when it comes to catching fish. Frequently more than half the field gets blanked every day just trying to catch a 15" keeper and there are usually 150-200 guys NE State Tournament every year. As I said earlier, it make me appreciate the quality of the fishing in our pond that much more. On the same note, club fishing has made me a much better fisherman.
IMO, there are a lot of pleasure boaters out that cause more havoc on public waters than any other group, if you hate jet skiers, raise your hand.
