I have no issue with guides fishing in tournaments. I also have no issue with the few tournaments / trails that ban guides from fishing. Variety is the spice of life.I get that if you guide on a given lake you have tons of people that know and probably use your spots. However, being on the water almost daily is most definitely an advantage over the average working man that fishes a few tournaments on the weekends. Most non pro tournament anglers and non guides would be lucky to average 1-2 days a week on the water. Time on the water is very meaningful in staying up with patterns at any given time of the year. Even if it is not on the same lake. Personally I think staying on top of the pattern is way more important than a given spot. Not trying to start an argument but I respectfully disagree that being a guide is not an advantage.

I think you are very far off on this. Most guides have regular jobs and guide as a second job to help make ends meet. They are far from having a financial advantage. If they made that much money at their regular job they would be fun fish and not guiding. Therefore, instead of pre-fishing for tournament fish they spend their weekends taking others out to catch numbers. Half the time they are being booked it is for crappie trips. So while you are out pre-fishing they are out looking for crappie. If you look at most of the tournament results, very few of them are won by guides. Most are won by locals that spend a whole lot of time on the water throughout the week.

Now if a guy is successful at being a guide for bass then most likely he is a decent to good bass fisherman. If he fishes enough tournaments he will win one every once in a while. This is no different than non guides. If you look at people who win consistently you will see that very few of them guide.

If you are scared that someone being a guide is an advantage and you do not want to have to compete against them then you also need to ban - retired people, people who can fish the lake after work during the week, people whose spouse makes a lot of money so they do not have to work and can fish when they want, people who own companies and can take off whenever they want, and people who can afford better equipment than you. I guess while your at it, if the lake gets tough to catch a limit we should just make all tournaments a 3 fish limit so more people have a chance to beat others that are better than them.

Last year in the trail I fish, a guide (on the lake that he guides on) won $5460.00. The rules were changed for the 2018 season.

I guess there are those that play golf, have a 22 handicap, play a weekend skins game, and beat a 2 handicap, and feel they just kicked the 2's rear. Guess, what, you didn't!! Some are competitive and some want a competitive advantage. Seems to me, those who don't want guides in tournaments, are wanting a competitive advantage, by making the field less competitive. I want Kevin VanDam, Kriet, Grigsby, Reese, Hackney, all of them to enter our little club tournaments, on the very off chance I actually catch a few giants and beat them. Why do you enter tournaments and claim to be a "competitor" if you don't want to beat the best? If I do fish with Lawson, Niggemeyer, Mitchell, Biggs, etc. I want to beat them, on that day. On tournament days, I want to beat my partner and catch all 5 of our keepers. He wants to do the same. Back to, if you can't run with the big dogs, stay off the porch.

At the same time, some of us fish at night, or leave the house at 3am to be at Sandlin to pre-fish until 10am, we fish Tuesday nights at Athens, Saturday nights at Fork, boat captain for high schoolers, hire guides, etc. etc. just in hopes of getting a little better. I'm nearly 56 years old and I am still working to get better. I do believe in the journey! I did find out that if you buy a Skeeter, you never lose a tournament again!!

At some point tournaments start having so many "competitive leveling" type rules that they are gonna have to put an asterisk on the plaques noting all the people that were unable to fish it because of said rules.

Longer off limits would fix it....hell the tournaments on Fork they can't fish, the people that can hire the guides to show them wear to fish, how, with what... couple days before

I think longer off limits would be good, maybe 30 days, hell if I were a guide on a particular lake and did not win money most of the time i would be embarrassed or maybe humbled is a better term.

My only issue is when guides fish tournament �trails�, but only fish the lake they guide on and never fish the other lakes.

the greedy me says : heck no they cant fish, taking possible money away since they are on the water all the time on the same lake.

the sensible me says: no biggie, they have equipment and fish landing failures just like anyone else, no big advantage being on the water sticking their fish with clients.

I try to be more sensible in my older age.

I do disagree when I know one guide who intentionally quit guiding on Lake Fork so he could fish the tournaments. When you see him place in the top of the field almost every time he enters a tournament. He still guides other east Texas lakes and still shares information with his guide buddies.

60 days off limits equals field for everyone

Not really

I'm with this guy.

This is a good point. I have no problem with guides fishing as long as they show up for the other lakes on the trail.