Generally, no. Guides are usually booked all week long preceding the major big bass tournaments that come to Lake Fork. Not to mention all the folks that call them just to ask for general areas/techniques and cough up a few dollars for the info. Just because the fish are there one day doesn't mean they'll be there on tournament day.

Now if there is a tournament that has a rule against it, then it is plain out cheating. The THSBA has a rule against it for two weeks prior to their tournaments. Bass Champs has amended their rule for 2015 to include "receiving" information from anyone that has been on the lake during the off limits period, regardless of whether compensation is involved. If someone took the information you mentioned in either of those cases and tried to enter the tournament, I would consider it to be an attempt to cheat.

If anyone on here likes casual reading, I recommend the book Double Whammy by Carl Hussein. Hilarious fiction book about cheating in bass fishing.

cute worked for the "PC" nature of the TFF

lol

I meant 50 percent of the tournaments not 50 percent of the contestants. It was late for me when I typed that

this post is a finalist for the dumbest thing I have read on TFF in 2014

A looong time ago when I helped develop and manage the Lakes of Danbury, I also worked as an "inspector" or whatever you wanted to call it, at some fishing tournaments. I never saw much cheating my own self, but heard some gawdawful stories....no names..

One cheater was caught because the fish in question regurgitated some bait species not found in the lake the fish was supposed to be caught from. Either the fish was from another lake or it had some minnows stuffed down its craw...

But the worst I heard about was insidious, difficult to detect, and ultimately lethal to the fish. So much more subtle than just putting some lead in the fish, or injecting water in the fish, or some other things....this was bad.

Using a piano wire through the vent of a gravid female, the ovary can be ripped open, exposing the eggs inside to water coming into the vent, the eggs will swell and the fish will gain up to half a pound in water weight. Only by actually dissecting the fish can this be discovered.

That one was about the money.

Especially given the context of where the writer was from and what he does, that article was not all that bad.

Yes, I've gotten bored while fishing, but it still beat working.....

Wow! what a story. Somebody should write an article about that!

Years ago, the Granbury Bass Club put on an open tournament every year. I'm thinking it was around 1987 or 1988, the first two or three finishers were disqualified if I'm not mistaken. All failed the polygraph over one simple question... "Have you ever cheated in a bass tournament?"....
Maybe an old timer from the club might remember that.

I'm not a tournament fisherman, but I do find it ironically funny that officals would determine the outcome of a bass tournament
by giving fishermen a lie detector test..

If you want to read a hilarious novel about bass fishing cheaters get Carl Haissen's THE DOUBLE WHAMMY. He's nuts, as are his characters. It's one of his older ones, but it's a scream. By the way, the Double Whammy is the name of a lure.

I met with an Editor from Texas Monthly and pitched the Robby Rose story when he got busted a few years back on Lake Ray Hubbard.

I even turned her on to the numerous threads here about him, his "prolific winning" was probably all a fa�ade and he cheated darn near all the time as far as we can tell.

All that just got him a Bum Steer award, there was soo much more to him, got a rather light conviction served time on weekends etc, paid fine, no fishing for a while bla blah blah

When money is involved, you best believe cheating goes on. When I lived in central Illinois we used to have a Wednesday Everning Pot tournament in the summer time, and we caught the guy that ran the tournament cheating. He bought a 5 lb fish off a kid who caught it from the bank!!! Now this was a $150 or so tournament.
If you consider a tournament where there is a $5000 guaranteed first prize, you better pay for a polygraph or your tournament won't last long.

I agree with you 100%. They just can't admit that somebody else is doing a better job at catching fish than they are. So they [censored] and moan in the background.

And yet all the decent money trails still use polygraphs. Wonder why?

99% of the ones whining just suck and should spend more time practicing instead of typing............