Not alot of trails fishing on Sunday any more. The old Mon-Fri work week now seems to include Saturday for lots of people making it difficult to fish most of the trails.

Economy down fuel prices are up. Too dang expensive to fish a trail seems better to just jackpot the local events.

Mark this would be a neat concept, one item for thought. If the lakes come from a 100 mile radius, post the lakes in that region well before the start of the year. The participants could visit the "unfamiliar" lakes on their own time, find the ramps and at least learn how to run the "main" lake before heading to it completely blind if chosen for a tournament.

Lack of a younger generation fishing. Older folks move on to other things. Competive feelings fade. We need younger folks fishing tournaments. No need to have 21 ft boats either. Just need younger fishermen.

To many trails.

That's not the issue IMO. Look at how far college fishing and even high school fishing has grown. When I was in high school I was very lucky my stepdad had a bassboat. Kids now have their own bass boats

i have seen a lot of guys that look to be 20 to 25 years old with bass boats fishing. What also hurts some trails is letting guides fish. I'm personally not fishing against guides. Call me what you want but I donate enough money already to the locals which I think I can fish against but guides, no way.

This is not that hard to answer, this is one of the rare things thanks to the internet that could be figured out. Most results are published, one of the larger organizations could easily get a list together of the names of basically everybody that fishes tourneys in the state, then you start playing with number, are guys fishing one trail, are they fishing everything within certain areas, how far do they tend to travel, what formats draw the most guys, what formats draw guys that fish multiple tourneys vs 1-2 a year. What is the total number of guys that fish any tourneys. And you can go back years with this stuff. Slap it up against whatever variable you want, ecenomy, gas prices, lake levels. I don't know if the trails that are serious about doing business are doing this stuff, every other business I know is all about this kind of research and unfortunately doesn't nessasarliy have access to competitors customer data base, not so with bass tourneys. They seem to just throw mud against the wall and see what sticks or worse yet listen to what people say on forums as opposed to looking at actual buying patterns which are 2 completely different things.

Here is my idea on what might work. THE TEXAS WIDE OPEN. Two man team events, roadrunner, catch, photo, release. Team can fish from same or separate water craft of their choice, polygraph examiner at every event. It brings in the guys that want to compete against the best but don't have boats with live wells. Lots of guys fishing kayak tournaments that I believe would make the switch if the pot were right and had a fair chance at competing. Would be interesting to see the kind of results from that type of tournament. It would bring in some younger folks as well.

Everyone is tap dancing around the fact that tournament fishermen are some of the most fickle people on the planet. Pleasing an entire trail of anglers is almost impossible. There will always be whining and bitching no matter how good a trail is. Someone can and will find something to bitch about.

The Holy Grail FLW TTT back in the day. Pull that rabbit out of a hat and you got the trail to blow all others away. But that's just a dream.

You don't say. Lol

Too many trails and too many trails with too many divisions. I used to look at tournament results on Monday mornings to see who caught what. Now, that is an hour long process. Its so bad that you cant even keep up with all of them. Its too many watered down trails and too little water in our lakes!!

I know cause I is one myself....................

How many guys actually fish 2 tourneys a year and pay an entry fee of 200 or more in the sate of texas, I could be wrong but I put the number at 1500 or less total. I also think that the sport of tourney fishing is suffering from the same issues as golf, takes to much time, too much money, to much commitment and is just not all that fun sometimes. Guys that would otherwise fish tourneys don't because thier kids are playing never ending youth sports. Also activities like hunting have become more expensive and at the end of the day you are competing with all other recreational activities for the dollar. It's truly a niche deal now.