Guess I'll be the minority here, I'm glad that TPWD is offering this program. Come on guys, they're not mandating it, just trying to offer assistance to those that like this more conservation oriented approach. Is it right for all tournaments? Nope. But its a fun format that's more fish friendly and the good folks of TPWD will help you out with scales if you so desire. I'm not a biologist so I'll leave the mortality rates and such to them. We have the best fisheries management in the country, good to see them leading the way with a new conservation minded approach to tournament fishing.

If thats the case then lake Fork would have the smallest fish of all lakes.

First off, let me say I support the idea of a MLF format style tournament. I've tried to figure out how to have one myself. I also think that most fishermen would support the idea IF it were a feasible option. I wanted to make it work from not only the standpoint of fish care, but for the shear adrenaline rush of the format. If it rattles a seasoned elite pro, then I can only imagine how addicting it would be to the weekend angler.

With all of that said, in my opinion, there is no way to logistically manage a tournament with this format. Yes, a bass club can do it, but it would be impossible for a trail that draws 50 plus boats to make it work while maintaining their integrity. There are just too many gray areas.

Where I think more of the focus needs to be is on the tournament director. We have two major responsibilities that are always overlooked - fish care and educating our fishermen. Once that fish hits the scales, he's now MY fish. I'm responsible for his well being. If he dies, then it's on ME. I try to prevent my fishermen from bringing weak fish to the scales by educating them and reminding them of the procedures to keep fish healthy in a live well. Also, to help with the issue of bringing weak/stressed fish to the scales, we cut our hours and limits back when it starts to warm up. I have personally fished tournaments where the TD did nothing right to benefit the fish - no bump tanks or bump tanks with no oxygen running, delaying the fishermen while the fish are out of the water to visit about how they were caught or to take pictures, not having adequate fish release location, etc.

Do I believe the number is 15-60%. Yes I do. In your local benefit for Billy Bob where they weigh in on the tail gate and everyone is waiting in line with the bag of fish sitting on the asphalt only then to finally be released in 12" of water that's been polluted by 15 ski boats in the past 10 minutes, I do believe the number could be 60%. Organizations that are run efficiently by knowledgeable people, the number is easily down around 15-20%.

As many have said above, tournament fishing has been around for years. Yes, there are more tournaments now than there used to be, but TP&W stock these lakes better now than ever before. We as tournament directors need to implement a few things to help with fish care. One of my ideas would be to set a minimum required weight to get a check. This way, if the required weight was 15lbs, and at 3:00 a team didn't have 15lbs, they could release their fish in the middle of the lake and not put them through the stress of the boat ride and weigh in process. Otherwise, that same team might would bring in their 12.5lbs hoping everyone else had a bad day, too.

It would if it didn't have a slot

I agree 100%... Good post.

I think you have some great ideas there. Put a minimum weight to weigh in and you'd have a lot less fish kill. Set the pay places based on how many bags over the minimum weight are brought in. Might be a challenge though in points based trails, but I like the idea.

That may be the most ignorant, uninformed statement I've ever seen written here. How many eggs a female produces has nothing to do with how many fry reach two years of age. If that comment was based upon your observations, I'd love to hear your evidence.

Funny (sad) to me that any time TPWD proposes anything new in regards to fisheries management, the tournament fishermen are the first to start crying about hydrilla and grass carp. And the "we could filet them all" argument is moot, because you're simply not going to do it.

I would like to see some statistics around all (50 boats or more) tournaments on 10 Texas lakes for the last 10 years. How many fish per entry, average weight per fish, top 10 places total weight?

People can say whatever they want but backing it up with some facts would be nice. There is enough info out there that if they really wanted to show facts, they could do it.

based on which source you choose believe,each pair of spawning bass produce from 6,000 to 12,000 fry..I read once that a pair of spawning bass could produce over 300,000 fry but that may over a p[eriod of time......how many bass do you suppose are killed by tournaments? How many fish need to die each year to keep the entire bass population from overloading the capacity of the reservoir?
how many eggs a female produces has everything to do with how many fry are produced.....without eggs,no fry will be produced and generally the more eggs produced,the more fry and eventually adult bass will be produced...
I'm gonna let you slide on the ignornant,uninformed comment...try to show a little class in the future...

Excuse me but weren't there studies that said Bass tournament releases were safe, that the mortality rates were good relative to other things. So, what I see here is a feeler being stuck out to see how the fishing industry will react to it. There is MONEY involved somewhere in all of this. Does this mean that the future Bass Boat will longer need live wells. I smell a rat from the Kayak industry wanting to compete with the big boys.

Less than 1% of fry survive to adulthood. Average spawn is 8,000 eggs. That's 80 bass making it to their second year. Is that 10 times the number of fish lost each year to tournament mortality?

Look up Todd Driscol, TPWD biologist. He does this exact study on rayburn and toledo every year I believe. I've looked at them to see if they have trends. What I did notice is a pretty small drop in the average doesn't look like much on paper but on the lake the fishing was a lot different

I looked up and read a couple of the article's that Todd Driscol was involved in. I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of the ones that I read:

"Although the proportion of the bass population harvested by anglers was also low (6%), three times more bass end up in the frying pan than die from tournament mortality. In fact, because bass fishing effort is high and catch-and-release fishing is popular (anglers immediately release 42% of catch > 14 inches), we estimated hooking mortality associated with catch-and-release kills the same proportion of the bass population as tournaments (2%). We make this comparison to illustrate the low impact of tournament mortality, not to suggest catch-and-release fishing is negative. Without question, voluntary angler release of bass has helped sustain and enhance the bass fishery at Sam Rayburn."

Also the percentage number is really wide and a lot of CYA. 15% to 60%. I believe it is closer to the lower end myself. But TPWD sticks that huge number out there as scare tactic. If it was really that high there would not be tournaments on most lakes.
As far as the promotion of the weigh and release events, if there was a way to do this and keep everything honest I would be fine with it. But there isn't except for maybe low entry championship events at best.
No way a team event like bass champs could do it. That would put a 3rd "volunteer" in every boat. Hard to find 300 volunteers.
Plus I absolutely would not be for a MLF kind of deal where one fished for 12' all day and just went by pure numbers. That is only flaw I see in their venue. But MLF is for entertainment not really a tournament.