Usually multiple layers of rules like pro series, excluded, earnings from fishing, etc.

There's no money in fishing tournaments, check. There's no money in chasing your dreams and little green fish, check. There's only family woes, financial strains in tournament fishing, check.

Guess I'll put my focus on working in the fishing industry. Who wants a washed up tournament angler that can move product like a $20 whore on shore leave payday weekend.

Looks like some Elite pros like it.


https://www.bassmaster.com/elite/news/daily-limit-removing-elite-entry-fees-best-thing-ever/

I can’t get audio without Facebook. Buddy is a guy everyone wants to root for- looks like he is happy about it.

Just reading the article I linked above your post. There are some happy with the changes.

Yep, that’s my thinking as well. Why would you want to spend $45k to GO to work! One thing if it ends up in a college degree, but for fishing???

So out of 103 places (assuming same field size as last year) 2025 payouts are :
- better for 63 places
- same for 10 places
- worse for 31 places


So all things being equal, the new scheme should help more anglers than it hurts, if their sponsor circumstances and performance were the same as 2024. It would be worse for those anglers who consistently land in that range of 20th to 50th.



If this is accurate, which from all I've seen it seems it is, BASS really missed on this. It wouldn't have taken someone at BASS that long to run the numbers for each individual angler year over year, and/or over a 3 year period and see how the numbers shook out. I'm shocked they didn't. This is not paying for performance, it's more protecting the guys who aren't. They'll have to make some adjustments.


If you read or listen to the thing BASS put out thats exactly what they did, they took this payout and took the last 3 or 4 years and i think it would have benefitted everybody or a very high percentage. So, if they let this go then most will benefit over the course of multiple years. Im not running the numbers but somebody is free to check that


That's good they did that, and the Hackney article says about 2/3rds of the Elites benefit over a four year period. So, that makes more sense as to why they went that direction.

Now everyone gets a trophy

Thats it???? No ribbons??? What a crock!

Something that dawned on me today while watching an old episode of Bassmasters is that we are in a time where a social media bass fisherman can make a living without ever fishing a pro tour but a professional angler can't earn a living without a social media presence.