And no , that’s a ridiculous notion.

Huge difference between the two scenarios

You guys haven't seen the new Garmin Live-Hook'em....

Heck I welcome the guy that can do it. That would be a feat. Until then I have no worries.

I've been arguing this for years. You can have 10k in rods/reels, 20k in electronics but you can't have a $35 2ft platform to help with sight fishing. Blows my mind

Maybe another way to ask the question:

Would you be okay with the outcome if you knew the winner of a tournament used their Livescope to locate fish and then used a lipless crankbait to repeatedly cast at them and snag them on the body? The angler was hoping they would bite the lure but some of his fish were only tail or gill hooked.

Anyone protest the win after he explains on stage what he did?

I watched some of it and many of his fish were snagged outside the mouth. Whether he snagged them or the fish swiped and got foul hooked IDK but if they were snagged how is that any different than what Jeff Sprague snagging that 6lber sight fishing on MLF. Come to think that was also on Fork.

A lot of guys had livescope that didn't catch a limit and didn't make the cut on Fork. Doesn't seem like a competitive advantage to me. It's all about how you use your tools. Listening to his interviews Patrick Walters really worked at it be able to catch them. His goal was to catch the biggest fish of the week. So he practiced looking in the timber for individual fish. He found there was a lot of fish out there. Then he threw swimbaits big and small, crankbaits and eventually jerk baits. Then he had to work at it. He had to bring the bait right in front of the fish, then the fish would follow it for half the cast and he had to coax it to bite. Lot of fish gave up and swam away. He also said he chased one for 250 yards until he could finally get a bait in front of it and then it chased and bit. Just because an angler can see a fish doesn't mean they can get them to bite. It's no different than fishing a gin clear lake and watching the fish fallow your lure and they don't bite.

So it can really help, if you have the right game plan, find the fish, figure out to make them bite and find enough fish to make it 4 days. Doesn't seem any different than any other pattern in fishing.

if we knew that intentionally snagging was happening sure I would protest , no one wants to fish against Mike Long.

But to make a rule no , it's not the same as sight fishing

The rate at which this technology is growing, in ten years, it would essentially be sight fishing.
Better to keep the rules consistent and to do something about it sooner than later.

Saw a vid of a guy using it to snag paddlefish. Once they got tuned they didnt miss one. Pretty amazing really

It's illegal in Texas.

snagging or foul hooking any fish using pole-and-line in fresh and salt water is prohibited.

No, less regs and rules and more fishing.

Personally, I wouldn't care either way as I really don't think it would matter much. Several of the guides I use have them and they, to me, are a tool like anything else. As has been mentioned, half the field had LS. It's still about taking all your tools and experience and putting together the correct way for success. Using Fork as the example, you had to know pockets with standing timber with correct depth. Then balls of shad with roamers around them. Then know a jerkbait is the play. Only then use your LS and target the roamers and use it to dial in your casts and adjust your retrieve and see what gets them to react to it. Had any of the others had that plan, they could have executed the same thing. Walters is a wiz with a LS, but he is obviously a wiz at other aspects as well.

One kid I use up at Fork is a real LS wiz. One day we were out on a local power plant lake and with a gazillion dollars of electronics and the knowledge of how to use them, we ended up punching a couple of hundred miles of grass to land the 4 fish we did get.

I thought it was already a rule they had to be hooked in the mouth???

Just when sight fishing