TinCup whiskey pre-show - Sabine day 2

Link to live coverage!

John Cox on them early!

GGGGG Giant Ba.......no....wait....wrong tournament waters.

Dink fest.

SMC with a 5 pounder!

Opps I meant a 5 pound bag with 4 fish.

Scott Martin over 7lb already.

Did I see that right? Is bass is sponsoring itself for this tournament? If you sponsor yourself is that actually sponsored? Very strange...sponsored by a video game they themselves are pimping. I wonder if it is because nobody would give them money for sponsorship only product. I wonder if the next elite derby will be sponsored by bassmaster the magazine. It’s all very confusing. But I guess it qualifies as an endemic sponsor if you sponsor yourself.

Dovetail Games is the sponsor for the Sabine tournament. My guess is, by them committing to and paying for a sponsorship deal for this tournament was a way of trying to help them gain the exclusive rights to develop the game using the B.A.S.S. brand. Imagine that, BASS is going to have a steady revenue stream from the game, and are already gaining revenue from sponsorship deals due to the game and it hasn’t even been released yet. It seems life is good at the bass anglers sportsman society. I imagine the anglers who are good & fortunate enough to be fishing the Elite series are looking forward to having their name and likeness along with their sponsors brands being represented in this new game! Sponsorship and Brand Gold!

Aren’t they just sort of copying what MLF does to be successful?

It’s fishing tough alright.

https://www.bassmaster.com/video/elite-series-weigh

Decent crowd for day 1 too

Looks like these guys would kill to catch 10 2lb fish this week

That was painful to watch. Thank God MLF heavy hitters starts tomorrow.

I think the fishery has been decimated by back to back to back years of flooding & storm surge pushed by hurricanes. Not to leave without mention the amount of contaminated sites holding waste water in the general area. The consistency in the size of fish almost indicates there may have been some extensive fresh water fish kills over the recent years; either that, or the area is always inundated with much bigger saltwater predators visiting the areas well upstream.

Most would kill to catch a 12" keeper.

Keep coming up with excuses

I agree. Saturday should be fun to watch, group B is loaded.

With 5 fish. Stunning.

Yeah, they could crush them up there. I was thinking about taking a ride then last night was reading an article in BassFan and came across this regarding that tournament.

....Attendance is limited to competing anglers, essential staff and media covering the event only. Fans are encouraged to follow the event online....

....Television coverage of Heavy Hitters will be showcased across six two-hour episodes, premiering at 7 a.m. ET July 17 on the Discovery Channel. A one-hour special episode of MLF Inside Heavy Hitters will also air on CBS in late 2021...

How sad is it to have to put that kinda thing in a promotion for an event taking place on a nice spring day? Oh well, guess I’ll see if I can remember to get up early on some days in July to see how they caught them in early April.

I wonder how the communities hosting these events feel about that kind of thing? No fans, no crowds, no positive economic impact... ugh

Lol that's the same fishery I grew up on the 80's and 90's, it's better now than back then. The only difference is the upper neches which most you can't get to anymore and I doubt anyone is running that far north. That's where we always caught the 3-5lbers. It's a snooze fest compared to most fisheries. Challenging yes....but not having louisiana really sucks and houston being so far takes out a lot of decent bags

I just want to highlight this response. Very quick to defend bass for things you kill MLF on. Albeit, its ok to defend what you care about. The sabine river has never been known for big fish as far as i know

Streaming LIVE coverage will start tomorrow on Mlf.com. So you can watch it tomorrow the same way you watched the Elites today....good try.

There is a distinct difference. In this situation, anything considered legal should be kept because that’s all that is there and they need to weigh in 5 fish limit to be in contention. At any other fishery, if that’s all that was being caught in a given area but the new the fishery produced bigger, the anglers would move in search for the bigger bites. On the other side of the coin, they are perfectly content to hammer barely legal fish all day... there is no penalty for not finding the bigger fish.

The heavy hitters will be interesting - who will go for the big fish bonuses and who will sit on pods of feeding frenzy smalls and rack up the weight? My bet is Thrift takes them both... these are his back yard ponds they are fishing where he’s taken everyone’s money. He could fish these places blindfolded.

Really enjoyef the Sabine coverage today. Felt bad for Hackney losing tbat 5lber at the boat. Christie lurking in 2nd place there on the Sabine makes it hard to bet against him. His kind of fishing.

I knew he was going to lose that fish a second before it happened. That killed his chances.

You jinxed him.

“...was a way of trying to help them gain the exclusive rights to develop the video game...”

Kinda tough to have multiple developers develop a video game. Honestly, never heard of co-developers making a video game. I’m not even sure how that would work and I don’t think it’s possible. The only option is to have an exclusive developer, in my experience.

Bass is going to have a revenue stream, and it will last as long as the game sells, which will be anywhere from a month to six months with maybe a bump at holiday. If it’s an annual release (like Madden or FIFA) it will be a recurring revenue stream. But, unless you know something no one could know without being directly connected to the deal, there is no way to know if this is “already gaining revenue from sponsorship deals due to the game...”

That’s not typically how these things work. The promotion of a licensed video game is in the best interest of the licensor. The forward-thinking licensor (for this type of thing, a video game) will promote their own product at the expense of other sponsorships (similar to a TV network spending a quarter of a commercial block advertising their own TV show and not an advertiser’s commercial).

I highly doubt (based on my experience with such things) Dovetail is “paying” for a “sponsorship deal” to gain exclusive rights. Usually these things are a revenue share type deal, but I could be wrong. Why do you think this is the case?

Why would you get up early to watch something you hate anyway? Just record it and watch it at your leisure. Better yet, just remember what you saw when you streamed it live like everyone else.

We have had some good stringers of 3+ pounders in the Neches here where we grew up.

By the time they show them I have already forgot what they were catching them on and some of the time I have forgot who won it!

My wife doesn't watch it live and she love to watch it with me along with watching the Bassmaster events.

Day 1 - Behind the scenes - the local economic impact!

https://m.bassmaster.com/slideshow/day-1-behind-scenes-18#slide2

Big O can you do something about all the commercials? This is getting unwatchable. I'm switching to heavy hitters.

He clearly knows it is unwatchable, that is why instead of promoting the fishing going on live (which should be the primary focus) he appears to try to deflect from the onslaught of commercials and slow fishing. He is trying to instead persuade you to watch a video of interviews I guess from the jewelry booth, Scentsy candles, and hot dog vendors and the rather small part bass plays in the economic impact of a festival that has been already established for more than 15 years they are piggybacking off of.