Squaw Creek closed Saturday Feb 20 to host High School Tournament

This coming Saturday (Feb 20th) the reservation were block due to the North Texas High School Bass Fishing Association West Division tournament. They are expecting 160 boats. I wanted to go ahead and post this here because if you pull up without a reservation and you are not entered into the high school tournament you will be turned away. We had two or three show up during the Fish and Chips Tournament that were not allowed in. Do not want anyone to waste their time and gas.

Thanks for the update

Glad I've got me some Aledo boys they going to have a fun day and me watching.

I'm betting some boys from Arlington High School are gonna make a good showing.

Nice. That's where mine will go. I know an Arlington Martin team that's going to be there and good luck to them as well!

I got a Team out of Highland Park.

I'll be out there with my Lake Dallas team!

I think Josh Seale will be out there with a crew... I want to help with the next one, I had prior plans this go round

They definitely chose the right boat captain

175 teams do date

Up to 182 teams good Lordy.

Another Aledo team here!

182 teams??

Wow yall have fun with the parking lot
TTO was bad enough till they figured out how to get the hill cleared out

I will have my son and his team mate from Kennedale there. Hope they do good. I don't know much about that lake.

Good luck to everyone and Thank you guys that volunteer your days off to help these kiddos out.

I'll be there with a team from Graham. See you all there and good luck to all

I will be there with Arlington high. Hope to catch some fish. Hope the wind does not blow to bad.

I saw Allen Austin last night at a cross country meet. I didn't know he was the sponsor till last night. I told him what I knew but sounds like the kids are in great hands with the captains they have! Good luck!

I'm sensing a TFF side pot brewing... or maybe a "boat driver of the year"

Has anyone seen results for this?

Probably won't be posted for a few days. They usually post them first part of the week.
Close to 200 teams, just over 20lbs to win, big fish was just shy of 8, Keller won the high overall team.

Correct, we should get the results posted the first of the week. They have to go through and adjust points for non division teams and such, as soon as we do have them I will post on here.

I haven't even seen them yet from the Tournament

I did not get to make this one But i was told by couple of fishing buddies of mine that was there, and said there was alot of dead fish,are they not teaching the kids how to handle the fish and what happens when you catch them in deep water

It is up to the boat captains to teach them, I was told they did have some dead, but there was a bunch needed fizzed someone was there going around doing it. I personally was not there so I couldn't tell you first hand.

We can send out information about fish care but they wouldn't read it. Unfortunately it is up to the Team Coach, Advisor or Boat captains. We have a hard time just getting them to read the rules and information on the events.

We will be discussing this as a board and seeing what can be done to address the fizzing issue, the dead fish are also a issue but should be handled on the boat.

We had 20 pounds in the tournament yesterday, but yes some of our fish died. It's wasn't because we don't know how to handle them it was because the fish swallowed the hook every time. I just cut the hooks off to try and keep them alive but it didn't work for 2 of them. I thought it was the best thing to do.

We are pretty new to this tournament fishing. (And it shows with our results) We had a fish that needed to be fizzed. I have never done it, so I asked several people if they knew how and all I got were blank stares. I have since looked it up and I'll have what is needed to do it on the boat moving forward.

Unfortunately there are a lot of anglers, adult and youth that have no idea how to do it. I will see if we can post a video on the Website that will help some people.

You can also use fin clips, google that, they are clips that attach to the fins with weights and help hold them upright in the live well. We use them as well and they will work.

http://flipclipfishing.com/how_the_flipclip_works.html

I was there and there were some dead ones that were collected for someone to clean! I was in my boat collecting all floaters and I personally bleed 30 to release air in the bladder all were dr up to live to fight another day. But if you don't know how don't try get help,I found several that had been stuck in poor locations something all captains shout learn!!

Thanks Tommy for helping out

I pick up 15 dead ones at the end. The fellows at squaw clean them. One problem I see is that we have ski boat and I know ski boats don't have live wells. I don't if they had another type of cooler live well system or not. I keep 5 or 6 fizz needles on my boat just in case.

We will send a email, they are required to have live wells, when they drive by the live wells are supposed to be open and on so we can see they are working. Thank you for picking up. That should never happen, I know fish die sometimes but should never be tossed in the lake .

KEN I did see on guy with some type of cooler system that had recirculation pumps. I think some where a live but because they needed to be fizzed they died. Some tried to save them but after riding around in a live well all day some did not make it. The water temp was almost 80.

I keep seeing boat captains drive around with the kids on the deck of the boat and with no life jackets on.
We even saw one captain put his kids sitting backwards on the deck with a rod as he drove the boat back and forth in a cove trolling.

All we need in that instance is a TX number and descriptions of the boats . Like I said earlier it doesn't matter how many emails are sent people just don't read the rules. Only thing that can be done is other boat captains say something to them on the water or turn in the information for a DQ.

Not in my boat. I won't even start the motor without life jackets on and both kids seated. If we don't teach these kids some safety they will never learn it.

Maybe there needs to be one big meeting before a tournament with all Boat Captains and kids and coaches and let them know what happens if they don't follow all the rules and have spotters on the lake watching

I will tell you as a first time captain that volunteered to captain a team, I was given no information from the tournament director or anyone else. No boat check, no live well check, no safety equipment check. I believe that this program is very beneficial to the kids that participate in it. A meeting prior to launch would have been awesome. However I think more planning is in order to cut down on launch times and so forth. All and all I had a good time and so did my team. They caught a limit and learned some stuff they didn't know. BTW I'm not complaint but rather voicing my concerns.

We have tried that as well, not everyone would show up. We have a pre season meeting where we invite a team advisor from every school and have at the most 15-20 advisors show up. They are the ones that are responsible for passing the information along. It is also always posted on the website under the division you are fishing. It has a tournament itinerary listed along with rules . The spotter deal is a good idea as well, if we could find volunteers. Most of us run a team of our own as well as boat captain. I am in no means trying to start a argument , just letting you know what all we have tried to do.

Maybe have everyone meet in the parking lot prior to blast off. No boat leaves out to fish without attending the meeting/safety/livewell check etc. Make it non negotiable.

OneFishAway -

Boat checks are generally done in a drive by fashion on the water, just as many tournaments are done. Navigation lights, life vests, open live well checks, kill switch attached, etc are all things looked for as boats idle by. A meeting prior to launch is not feasible, nor are individual boat checks, especially when you have 190 boats. There is plenty of planning done to help cut down on launch times as an itinerary is posted with tournament information and maps with staging information prior to take off for every tournament for every THSBA division. These are located on the THSBA website on the respective division's tab. The problem is there are several who do not read the stuff put out there in order to help facilitate the process. Not a knock on anyone, just the truth.
Trust me, the information gets sent out, as I am the one constantly sending out all the emails to the team advisors. If the information stops there, there is not much more we can do do make it any easier. My advice would be to get with the team advisor for the team you are boat captaining for and ask them to forward the information I send out asking for that information to be passed on to all teams and boat captains. You will find that more info than you would ever want is being passed on from us with the THSBA.
We appreciate you being a boat captain. Without boat captains, this activity doesn't work.

Tim Haugh
President, THSBA

First of all Thank you for your time, your team advisor is the one that should be passing the information along. Like above it is also on the website. The bait checks and safety checks were done for the past 2 years and we caught flack because it took too long. We switched to SAF and they do not require a pre tournament boat check. The Top 5 finishers are the ones that receive a safety check. The live wells are supposed to be checked as you drive by. If they were not done then we will address that with the tournament director. Once again thank you for you time and teaching the kids .[quote=OneFishAway]I will tell you as a first time captain that volunteered to captain a team, I was given no information from the tournament director or anyone else. No boat check, no live well check, no safety equipment check. I believe that this program is very beneficial to the kids that participate in it. A meeting prior to launch would have been awesome. However I think more planning is in order to cut down on launch times and so forth. All and all I had a good time and so did my team. They caught a limit and learned some stuff they didn't know. BTW I'm not complaint but rather voicing my concerns

Mark we would never leave. No matter what we do not everyone will abide by it. The Team advisors all receive emails before every event that go over all the information for the events. They need to be the ones to pass it along. If needed I wil start posting it on here. But then the ones that don't get on the TFF will not know what to do. But atleast the guys on here will maybe pass the information on.

I commend you all for what you are doing. Wish you all the very best with it.

Thanks bud, I wish we had a easy answer for it all. It has been a skyrocket of a ride.

The Keller team has a meeting before each tournament. We discuss the lake, upcoming tournament, safety rules and such. We are handling what needs to be handld on our end, and I'll be addressing how to fizz fish at the next meeting b fire the ray bob tournament. I'm learning too. If I notice something that I feel like needs to be passed along to the kids I'll do so!

I think ya'll are doing a great job but its up to the Team Advisor to make the kids and boat captain to understand the rules

Thank you all. I do the same for my team, we have a meeting prior to every event to discuss these things. I wish it was that way across the whole association, but it's not. Plus there are still a whole lot of new teams at these events.

To the powers to be,

this was my first time as a boat cpt and for the most part I will say that I had a blast and even learned a few things from the kiddos. That being said, there are a few things that I think could be done better or at least looked at. I may be getting the wrong vibe from prior posts about the rules and such but passing the buck when it comes to that is not a good practice. I know things get hectic and there are some that are not experienced boat cpt’s but that is no excuse when it comes to the safety of the students out there.
The ultimate responsibility for dissemination of the rules and enforcement of the rules, falls with the tournament director. Just saying that people don’t read them anyway doesn’t fly with me. A sound solution to this would be to appoint a Tournament Marshal to take that responsibility and to enforce the rules with a zero tolerance approach. These kids are for the most part Alpha personalities from what I saw and they need to learn life lessons above and beyond fishing. That’s a reason why I like the idea of these events! There are no participation trophies, you have to earn it. Mandatory meetings either the day prior or before the event should also be done, to make sure the Cpt’s understand their responsibilities. Now this could be done with just the School coaches and have them conduct their own meetings prior and if a team is found to be outside the scope of the rules, well the whole team is DQ’d or penalized.
I know this isn’t a farfetched idea because I saw this take place with one particular school. Make Coaches and advisors accountable for their individual teams and give the Marshal the authority to rule on the violations as a neutral representative of the said rules. This would free up the TD to handle other issues with the tournament. I looked over the rules again prior to this response and their isn’t anything secretive in there and it’s written very well. Even a novice boater or student can understand that a violation of the rules could result in a DQ. Having a set of rules that is only enforced when time allows is a recipe for disaster and shouldn’t be taken lightly.