Question then..... Why did I pay $210 today? Was that because of registering today?

Yeah rockie pretty sure I paid a late fee of $10 when registering at the lake.

You were here today? Would have liked to have meet you!

Yes BLT is a a good trail! I fished solo and sure could have used a net guy today because I suck at netting my own fish!

Nah jut fished some of the Amistad tourneys and paid the late fee at the lake.

Same here!

Ok guys, sorry for the delay in getting the results up. We had some computer issues at the weigh in.

The results are on the Cedar Creek Championship page: http://www.budlighttrail.com/BLT/2011/TeamChamp/CedarCreek/.

Congrats to Todd Pierce and Jeff Fisher for their win today, and to everyone that qualified for the State Championship!

Chris Davis

Rocky Martin,
If anglers register 1 week early by mail they do not have to pay a late fee. If anglers pay with a credit card there is an additional $10 charge because there are substancial costs to the businesses who accept credit cards. We charge a "convenience" fee for offering this service to the anglers who want to use the convenience of the credit card. There is a $10 late fee if anglers register after Monday before the tournament or on the morning of the tournament.

We try to encourage anglers to enter early so that when other anglers go to our early entry list and see a low number of entries, they will not back away due to a sometimes low number of entries on our early entry list.

All of the $10 late fees go to help us buy the Championship prizes. We collected approximately $350 in late fees for the Cedar Creek Championship. This money made up part of the $1800 we took out of our personal pockets because we did not want to allocate over 35% to first place out of the anglers entry fees. As I am sure you know, when a guarantee is made there are several options for the person making the guarantee, 1) take the guarantee out of the total collected and pay out whatever is left to the remaining finishers or 2) take the money out of the business and or personal pockets of the owners and do what you think is right. I hope you would agree our payout speaks for us.

The major difference in our BLT program and other programs is that anglers do not need to come by our registration site the morning of the tournament if they register early. They may go anywhere on the tournament lake to launch their boat and go to their fishing site at the time of their choosing. We want this to be the norm so that anglers do not feel crowded at one ramp trying to get parked and launched.

I hope this answers why I did not include the $10 late fee in my calculation of what was collected.

The BLT program does hope to be able to pay all our expenses someday without having to use our personal money. While we are not able to do that as of yet, we do believe that time is near. We believe this because we do listen and react to what our customer/anglers are saying.

Thanks for your thoughts and we hope you will continue to include us along with the other trails you are pleased with.

Thanks again,
BLT staff

I like the payout. Winner takes the lion share.

Unlike Media where they pay so deep that winner get chump change......

I enjoyed it. Caught some fish but not the right size. Windy in the morning but was a great day all around.

Z520
Do you really think 11lbs deserves a check?

Anglers,
I would like to make the point that our response to any of the questions or comments, made by anglers, are not intended to imply the BLT system is better or worse than any other system. We are simply explaining our system. There are a lot of ways to conduct a tournament and we understand not all anglers will agree on fishing times, trailering, polygraphs, payouts,fish care proceedures,rules, etc. However, we encourage your comments and thoughts because that is how we will gain a better understanding of what is in need of improvement and or what needs to stay the same.

We will continue to review what we are doing to make sure we stay in the mainstream of what anglers are expecting from us.

Thanks for all your thoughts.
BLT staff

sounds like a good payout really.

ive been eyeballin blt for a while now.

The payout is fine with me.

It is just fine and also well run and run by nice guys. I will continue to fish with BLT.

No! I do not think 11 lbs deserves a check! I love fishing the BLT and will fish it again next year and the year after that but if you are going to call it a championship, you need to treat it like a legitimate championship!! This was basically a glorified side pot tournament where the entry fees made the payout. Do I think 20 place should have been paid? Absolutely not! I think there should have been at least 12 places paid though. There was a lot of complaining after weigh in regarding how many places were paid and I think that will negatively effect future BLT tournaments. 1 in 10 for a championship is disappointing. I know there were several teams that stated they would not go to Rayburn if the payout was not any better than that. How many "Championships" pay 1-10 places???