Item's #4-5-6,I think he is talking about the promoters of these tourney's maybe buying a license or paying a fee. Not the participants or anglers.May be wrong, but who know's, but I do know Rayburn get's pounded with tournaments.Senile no way,Mr Kirkpatrick's been there a long time,guess he's entitled to his opinion as well as everyone else.

if promoters have to pay additional fees to hold a tourney, they will pass the fee along to the contestant. Simple math. At what point is enough enough?
For all the guys out there who are "hating" on the tourney guys keep in mind that the new tech on boats, livewell systems, rods, reels, baits,gps, depth finders/side imaging, line, PFD's, etc,etc,etc, etc, that is out there is driven by dollars and desire that is wanted by the tourney guys... Non- tourney guys are also the ones who benefit, including the haters.
Sun comes up every day and goes down every night. Fish die, sometimes at tourneys. Get over it.
The very guys that are getting bashed over fish that die are already bashing themselves over that fact, you can't make them feel worse.
I wasn't bashing Mr. Kirkpatrick just think that someone who has been around the business as long as he has would be a little more careful in what he is doing.... Seperating the ranks is a BAD idea.

I carry O2 mini cylinder if I am fishing a tournament in water over 85 degrees...I don't lose fish to heat in less than that, and I carry lots of frozen gatorade containers to cool down the live wells..As for this subject, you raise price or infuse bureaucracy of any kind and tourneys will fall off, and that will hurt the lake area economy more than anyone could imagine.

The only reason I don't think that a tournament license would work is because I think the state would just keep the money and nothing would change. I base this on the fact that the state makes me buy a perment to lease my land for hunting, yet I have never had anyone from the state come out and and survey my land help me with wildlife. I could get a mld perment if I do my own deer survey. I have asked for help on 3 occassions and not even gotten an email back. The same would happen if they charged the tournaments a license fee. If they used the money to build weigh in facilities with live release boats on the most heavily fished tournament lakes I would not be against it, but that would never happen.

hmm, just wondering how this whole money thing would/could go down.....
TPW governs the wildlife and navigational rules on Tx waters..However, are most lakes not governed by the particular water board that owns them????? ie: SRA, Corp, NRA, etc.
Again, just wondering how bad this pile is going to stink if we keep poking it with a stick....

Long winded and opinionated. l don't agree with his opinions.

Larry

Lets jog everyones memory, the last $5.00 increase, you know, the one to helped the state parks, funny how that money never stays in the Parks and Wildlife account, it goes to the Tx general account and we never see it again, the parks didn't.

Water issues on Rayburn are managed to prevent flooding from spring rains.
If you don't lower Rayburn through the winter, you may cause some serious down stream flooding from the massive spring rains that are the norm in east TX. Back in the drought, those rains just didn't come, and that was mother nature, not some tournament director who made some money.

This article was from 2007, and fish care education has came along way in 3 years.