I have seen and heard of a lot of really dumb things happening in these high school tournaments.


I think the organizers are so desperate to run it as a "no child left behind" event that they are accepting anyone that can pass a background check and owns a boat as a captain.

You want to see why there seems to be so many stupid people on the water these days, put a bunch of teenagers in boats with idiots and you have your future crop of moron mariners in training...

True story. A co worker in another town told me about this. His son comes home from school excited and tells Dad that he signed up for the HS fishing team and the meeting is that night. Dad said but we don't fish son. Son said that's OK they are gonna help us. So dad and son go to the meeting. The TD meets them and Dad says we don't know how to fish and only have an old 14ft flat bottom that we use a little to duck hunt in on a pond. The TD said we all started in small boats it would be fine, and that there is another kid that needs a boat to go in that he would put with them.

That boat is illegal according to just about every high school tournament we have fished and we have fished a bunch. My son has fished high school and youth tournaments for the past 8 years. He fished 16 high school events this past year (BASS, TBF, SETX, Deep East Texas. My experience is that the tournament directors enforce the rules and regard safety at a higher rate than adult tournament organizations. I notice most negative comments on these high school threads come from people who have not served as captains or organized the events but know someone who saw this or said this. Are they perfect and are there people who don't make good decisions? Of course there are. I could come on here and give a few instances where I thought someone was wrong but in the grand scheme of things the high school organizations are doing a excellent job providing opportunity and also maintaining safety. The idea that one bad outcome caused by someone's carelessness could cause the whole thing to be shut down is rediculous. There are plenty of inexperienced anglers, kids included, in the McDonald's tournaments where there have been some bad incidents and there isn't an outcry for them to be shut down nor should there be. Pull up some of the bigger high school fishing organizations websites and read their rules before you start casting stones.

I think the biggest difference here that causes a several of you (Hunter fishes, Hunter's Dad and Doug) to disagree is simply the locale of the lakes you guys are talking about. Both Hunter's are talking about Rayburn. There are way more experienced boaters per capita down here than in the metroplex. In the metroplex you will find more city come to country type people that don't have the experience that a lot of us East Texas boys have by the age of 10.

So I don't think you guys are comparing apples to apples here. You're comparing wild [censored] city indians to good ol' boys of East Texas.

By no means am I saying we don't have idiots in East Texas...I promise we do...I'm just saying we have experienced idiots! LOL

I agree too with both comments boaters and the organizations. We fish the SETX,Deep East Tex, & the YFL all have very comprehensive rules to prevent an incident. SETX has worked with the Jasper County Emergency Corps to have a rescue boat on the lake during the tournaments, and my wife as a school advisor has to report which of her teams are on the water in the morning and then cannot leave the event weigh in until she signs that all her teams have reported in. . I think that blaming the tournament directors or high school fishing as the problem is not the solution.

Just think if we could eliminate irresponsible behavior in others areas like driving how many rules (laws) could be taken off the books.
I agree with you Doug we need to do all we can to keep the events safe and fun for all participants and strive to never have a serious incident, and I think that at least in the events we fish the tournament directors are doing just that. I do believe if you asked them though they would all agree that they worry if they have done enough. I encourage you get involved with these organizations and see what goes into having these events. volunteer as a boat captain and provide the example of a responsible adult, because if we don't do that that then as you said we are training the next generation of idiots, only we can prevent that.
Andrew to your point I go back and read the SETX rules before each tournament to make sure I haven't missed anything LOL.