here's the rules for MLF...

d. All bass caught while sight-fishing (visually locating a bed or bass) must be hooked inside the mouth and immediately shown to your MLF Official for verification before removal of any hooks to be counted in your daily weight. Inside the mouth is defined as when the bass’s mouth is closed in its natural position, it will cover the entry point of the hook.

e. Once a bass is located visually (sight-fishing), it can only be caught and weighed one time per day, per angler. No angler may intentionally catch the same fish twice in the same day. Violation of this rule may result in loss of weight, loss of fishing time, a fine or any other penalty as outlined in 3A as determined by the Tournament Directo

what if you see a fish,on the bed,entice it into biting,catch the fish legally,weigh it and release it...later that day,you are fishing down that stretch of bank,not sight fishing,a fish bites,you catch it,it has a hook hole in its mouth and weighs the same as the the fish you caught earlier....is it a legal fish?...you wern't sight fishing,you didn't catch the same fish intentionally so is it a legal fish?.....unless you tagged that fish,there is no way to tell 100% if it is the same fish you caught earlier....remember the big debate we had about breaking your line and handlining the fish in..those against it were saying you could not be 100% certain if was the fish you lost....same situation here...
I don't know exactly what happened but I would bet those accused of breaking the rules had some justification for doing what they did....

Ole beartrap must of bent a lot of rules in his day.

lol, how many of you don't speed on the interstate?

this stuff is entertaining to say the least, not a single person on here can honestly say they have not "bent" a rule or broken a law (speeding) yet it is like reading a transcript of the show "the view" on Trump.

Some of these responses on this forum regarding cheating are really scary. Y'all need to start being grown men. Whats right is right and what's wrong is wrong and that's the end of it. MLF had a bunch of folks cheat. Plain and simple. They didn't do chit about it. THE END.

You learn a lot about folks on a thread like this.

as mentioned previously,most reasonable people would find it hard to believe that 6-8 people in this tournament all decided to "cheat" in this tournament....it's a lot more reasonalble to believe there was confusion regarding what was legal and what wasn't.....
I wish we could get some of the people involved to respond on here and tell us what really happened....
as far as bending rules and learning about peoples charactor,I jumped a lot of logs and sandbars in the 30 plus years of tournaments but I NEVER failed a polygraph test....

What about fishing from a dock with your grandson during the off limits time period?

lol, how many of you don't speed on the interstate?

this stuff is entertaining to say the least, not a single person on here can honestly say they have not "bent" a rule or broken a law (speeding) yet it is like reading a transcript of the show "the view" on Trump.