I used to fish a few tournaments long ago when we still had shotgun starts. They were wild, wooly and quite often a bit scary. There was always someone there that had no business driving a boat. The wife and I were staying out at a local lake this week and they were having a small local tourney one evening. I happened to be at the marina at start time and was a little surprised to see a shotgun start (I didn't think they had them anymore on this lake due to a fatality several years back). Most contestants are lined up facing the south and when the horn sounded some idiot on the west end of the line up decides that he wants to go east and cuts right in front of everyone. Don't know how a boat wreck was avoided...a couple seconds later I don't think one could have been avoided. It's true...you can't fix stupid.

yep its true

I havent see a shotgun start in years. We had some wild ones out of State Park on Lake Corpus Christi in the early 80's. I't a wonder we didn't kill eachother.

Our starts in the BFL are wild enough for me. Some boats don't get on plane that quick and some do and even thought they set us off one at a time, somebody gets wet everytime. Seems like someone always wants to take off way outside the rest of us and then cut across in front of everybody.

I can't remember if it was the last tournament on Rayburn last year in the BFL, or the first one this year. My buddy I haul with to tournaments almost got Tbone'd. The guy realized he was about to hit my buddy and jerked with wheel so hard he flipped, both he and the co angler went flying. I think my buddy said the though he flipped 2 or 3 times with the boat landing upright. I was 20 or 30 boats ahead and didn't see it.