You can't hunt on a public funded property without strict rules concerning numbers and harvest....and it's extremely limited

Only fishing tournaments and fishing guides get to make a living on water that someone else paid for with no restrictions other than those imposed on a recreational fisherman

Use to always say I would always choose fishing over hunting. If I had to pick one or the other now I would pick hunting every single time its way more relaxing and a lot less drama

No hammering here, your 100% correct, all this continued pressure to public water there is a coming collapse and I hope TPWD is on top of this. Making getting a bite tourger than it already is now is not going to attract youth in the future. I'm just thankful I have private property to fish, its amazing what pressure does to the quality of fishing.

This is my second year as a volunteer boat captain. I enjoy it and so do the kids. It’s a grind. I would prefer that the lake be off limits the week before. Kids get the Friday off before to prefish and hammer the lake and don’t understand why they can’t catch fish on tournament day. Lakes have been getting hammered since Covid. In my opinion it is getting harder and harder to catch quality fish. Go fish the lakes that don’t host the large tournaments if you have a problem with the number of boats on the lake. Go fish Grapevine, Nocona, Amon Carter, Bridgeport, Bonham, or Moss. Plenty of smaller lakes within an hour of Dallas that don’t host the large tournaments.

Genius

Please more people hunt. No drama and relaxing. Go try it !

Meanwhile no one brought up over a 1000 anglers fished Fork in one 2 day tournament on Fork this weekend.

Fork is getting raped, McDoogals, HighSchoolers, Mad Dogs and Berkleys all in 5 weeks

And in a month when everyone is at the deer lease or watching football a man can take a jig and catch 'em pretty good with some good ones mixed in and have the lake almost to himself.


It's all ebbs and flows.

Next week on Sam Rayburn there will be a 200 boat tournament. They are down there practicing all week . This is a B.A. S.S. tournament. Is this the kind of pressure you are talking about ? They fish for 2 days .

Yep. Along with "I'd rather see them outdoors fishing instead of playing video games".
Most won't admit to it but they grew up in the start up of Atari and Ninetendo and those companies didn't get rich because that generation was all out fishing.

It's about as real as the stories of parents walking in 20 ft of snow to school

I'm a HS captain and wanted to say all this did was add boat traffic to lake like any other holiday. Fishing was tough...we caught 12 runts and no keepers but not once did we feel that there was too many boats on the lake to fish it.

We did find that from time to time, we had to adjust the plans a tad bit when moving to new water. But we were able to go back to that spot and fish it.

PS: We are secret squirrel society. We have a handshake and only those who know, know.

Not popular but I wish they would issue x number of tournament permits on a given body of water. When they were used up for the year, you have to pick a different lake. It would spread the pressure out over more bodies of water.

I am sure the local Chamber of Commerce would love that idea!!

Maybe they should just limit the number of people on lakes tournament ornon tournament anglers alike. Fishing pressure is fishing pressure.