Maybe in addition to banning forward facing sonar, we should change the format of the tournaments and not bring fish to a weigh-in. Just weigh them when they are caught and release them.
Yeah, bringing in a bag was a showman tactic from Ray Scott. Before that clubs would weigh and clean the fish and have a fish fry. I attended some of those in my youth. MLF does it right.
Right I believe it 3 scales behind the dorsal fin with a hallo needle I think I could excuse it if a bass gets gut hooked it happens sometimes with the soft plastic
Tournaments should supply bass and restock the lake afterwards just like stocked trout so have facilities that breed bass and release it at the cost of the tournament expense or at least part of the entry fee
they just had a Bass Tournament out here on Lake St.Clair a good month ago and I went out to the Shores of the Lake a couple of days after the Tournament and was so shocked,disgusted,and sad to see all about 100(stopped counting) dead SmallMouth Bass littering and bloating along the Shore Line. this is getting so bad everywhere.
Weren't all those fish legal to take home and eat? Fisherman don't set the limits we just abide by them. If you have a problem with the limits than take it up with the DNR or whoever in that state sets the limits.
@@tomlarcher1 they are indeed legal to take home and eat but not to release to die .Each MLF angler can catch 200 fish , weigh them and release them not just 5 fish .
Years ago, we'd catch bass 40-50 ft deep in the winter on a drop shot. I didn't feel good about it then, because the majority would die no matter how you treated them in the livewell. I imagine what we're seeing currently is 10x worse than what we used to do occasionally with old school 2D sonar.
Just end tournament fishing. Stop trying to figure out ways to lessen the damage being done. ALL issues are fixed by stopping the REAL issue....the tournament itself. THAT is what you can do. Btw, you are not a "conservationist" if you participate in fishing tournaments.
@@kavehadib8402 Thanks. They are profiting immensely from public waters, destroying the fisheries and then leaving town to let locals deal with the destruction. State's fish and game depts. may just need to outlaw them completely. You will see a bounce-back in the fisheries never before seen.
The college tournaments really kill fish. with high school and college being the new thing, it will only get worse. I see this on ky lake a lot. no one cares. park managers push tournaments here like crazy. Dead fish are the norm.
What’s your buddy’s name? Tournament fishing has marred the sport for the rest of us recreational fishermen. It’s never been worse than now. Quit blaming everything on FFS Randy, it’s not just FFS but a host of issues.
Fizzing absolutely does work. I've fizzled piles of bass, many of them on the St. Lawrence River. I caught the same fish 2 days in a row on a shoal. I had to fizz it the first time.. When I caught it the next day it was on top of the shoal in 8 ft of water and spit up a perch..perfectly healthy and still feeding. Very high percentage survive. Please please please,whatever you do, don't discourage people from fizzing!!! Madness!
It works, but the health of the fish in advance to fizzing is the question. If the bass was really deep, or just moved up from deep water and you catch it and the eyes get red. It’s going to die. Better to fizz then not, but unfortunately fizzing doesn’t save nearly enough bass
So what are you saying Randy, stop fishing for Bass in deep water? We have been catching smallmouth for decades in deep water, WAY before the advent of FFS...fishing in the St Lawrence in December & January? Cmon man
I volunteer with the DNR in Minnesota. They show that when you fizz a fish, it just makes them look good, but they might not be and could die a few days later.
The bass never get a break with large tournaments (BASS and MLF - or 100+ boat Opens/Tackle Werehouse). Heck - may as well keep them and have a fish fry or something
There are a hundred million more people in this country that there were 40 years ago. My county has grown from 330,000 to almost 550,000 in that time. The local lake is crazy, hundreds of boats a weekend going around a 500 acre lake fishing the shoreline for bass. I’m amazed there are still fish in there. I don’t like FFS but I don’t think it will make a difference. It’s not the one thing, it’s the tide. Hell, most of these lakes weren’t even here a hundred years ago.
exactly and randy has touched on this point to his credit. Although he won't discuss it anymore for some reason. At what point does the popularity of the sport start to decrease the quality of fishing itself? Tough topic but clearly as it gets more popular our fisheries struggle.
For a declining fishery, there have been lots of century belts in most recent years. Ask your buddy Clunn, he says tourneys up there were best days in high teens. Facts only please.
That's the beauty of having a camera on the boat if that happens that's one less fish you're allowed to take and keep to take to weigh in or weigh in and release bottom line when you break off that's one less fish you get to count@@jordangourley3955
Catch, weigh, and release on the spot is the way all tournaments should be. Catch, keep, cull, weigh, and release somewhere hours later, does absolutely nothing good for the fishery.
So what is the solution it seems to me that whether they were using livescope or not they don't know how to handle the fish after they catch them, and that just sad!!!
Finally !! Something for you to be happy about !! You always regurgitate the same old stuff about how fishing is not about catching and that the real purpose is to be out in nature and have the “experience”, tournament fishing will help you drive your point home and make it a reality to most people that endeavor to enjoy the hobby !! You should be grateful !
I have always had my doubts about long term survival rates when fizzing bass. You are performing a non-sterile procedure using a large bore needle, creating a puncture wound in the air bladder and then releasing the fish back into lake water full of microbes. Even if fizzing is done correctly (which is unlikely) there are obvious concerns of infection and organ trauma thus decreasing the odds of survival.
Conservation agencies definitely need to think about the damage they are doing and logistically schedule these tourney's. Also to be fair to the local fishing community place limits on how many permits they are issued per month/season. It's friggen rediculous.
But I do have some stats from my club. We caught over 550 bass to weigh in during our season, about 1200lbs of fish total. We live in the Carolinas so a lot of these fish are caught in 20 feet or more. We had 10 dead fish weighed in over the entire year. The rest were released and swam off.....obviously alive.
I’m in Raleigh NC and I fish in 2 clubs, and I see dead fish that were weighed in alive go belly up by the time they get released at the water, and I have seen people waiting at the docks trying to collect the fish and take home for dinner 😮, which is good for a hungry family but it is so sad that bass anglers just don’t give AF,at least half of them don’t show any concern 😢😮😢
Ok, want to get some bands????? Put a reporter with a camera on the release boat or on a boat following the release boat and film the floater’s!!! Now, the public cry may be to band tournaments as some others suggest more so than FFS!! But if it’s about conservation, pick the battle!!
Ban FFS and most of all absolutely ZERO tournaments during the spawn. Ridiculous when we have so called "professional" fishermen/women cruising around catching them off beds! Elites take them off their beds to not continue their spawn. While MLF has had different anglers catch the same bass off the same bed every day of the tournament. They get to score the same bass they caught the day before. Tournament fishing has become a JOKE! There's no "sport" in it anymore.
100%. The pro tours just follow the spawn around only for the sake of great weigh in photos for Bassmasters magazine. If bass are on beds they should be absolutely off limits.
They don't need to have five fish limits in these tournaments either. Why don't they go to three fish limits or less? Reduce the hours on the water too. Have weigh ins at noon. This way the guys have to go to a spot based on experience and knowledge rather than chase them around a lake with electronics.
Tournaments have ruined fishing. EVERYBODY has to try and be a pro, show off their boats, their trucks, their patches on their shirts…Stop it. Fishing is not a sport. It’s a recreation.
Many gamefish lack the ability to adjust to drastic pressure changes and can vent the swim bladder. Trout and salmon can but bass, panfish, perch etc. can't.
Same thing is happening in Sturgeon Bay WI. Makes me sick. Walleye tournaments up here also have done lots of damage. Run 50 miles with 6 to 10lb fish in livewell. I have witnessed countless big walleye floating dead after they launch them down the tube to release.
Wow i had no idea that that many die geeez man. I often wondered about fish caught in deeper water. Thank you for this video Randy. They need to get rid of forward.
So he felt that 50% died. With no facts to back it up. Or being on each boat to see how the fish was. Makes sense. Just ban fishing all together. If the big fish are in the deeper water, where do you think everyone is going to fish? Tourney or fun. They’ll fish deep where the big ones are.
I have a friend that fished also. He didn't say a word about any of this. Randy quit trying to scare everyone about everything unbelievable!! Nothing but scare tactics!!
To add to your info.. Bass Masters had a kayak tournament 224 anglers, just before MLF 77 anglers and now The Elites another 100 + anglers and all this in about 6 weeks. not to mention any local tournaments, that's a ton of pressure on the fishery .
This has been going on I live in the south and after a tournament around the boat ramp their are floating dead bass everywhere you look so l have been mad for years and after years turns a good place into a place that there are just very few bass
totally agree, up north here they still insist to have walleye tournaments in july and august, not good 70 to 80 degree water, released to die later, most of them
The state where the tournaments are being conducted need to closely monitor the fish releases and fine the hosting organization for each fish that dies. maybe $1000.00 per dead fish
I always see dead at a tournament weigh-in. Then there's delayed mortality after release. Only time will tell how much of an impact this will have on the bass population in these fisheries'.
As much as I am against FFS, this seems a little hard to believe. The St Lawrence covers 617,800 square miles. In comparison Table Rock lake is 67 square miles. I suspect that FFS plays only a small part, as it hasn't been in use that long. Not sure what, but I suspect other things are in play.
Deep fishing has dramatically reduced the numbers of big fish on Douglas Lake in East Tennessee. 20’ is my rule of thumb. I never fish deeper. I read that 30 years ago in In-Fisherman.
Can we just stick to teaching about bass fishing techniques? The old BASS is bad, MLF is bad, FFS is bad using stats that no one else can find and anecdotal evidence is just gaslighting.
In Lake Eufaula Al. There was an Alligator that hung out around the state Marina and waited on the tournament bass being released back in and would gobble up all the disoriented bass🐊
I fish for relaxation, and it's cheaper than therapy. LOL. I have been fishing Lake Erie for more than 30 years. After every club or pro tournament, you can see so many Smallies floating in the bays. It's a sad site for sure.
I live and fish the Detroit river. It’s quite sad the last couple years the big small mouth we find floating after any tournament. Not just the pros, the locals put a whooping on the bigguns every single week. I’m with you on this cheater box. Basic sonar tells you a ton of information. My buddy has it and kinda gave up using it because of this.
there is a bunch of cry babies in this comment section and it’s sad too see, ffs is not “ruining bass fishing” the select few that don’t know how to treat the fish (fizz)r the problem. Plenty of anglers fished deep before ffs was a thing and it was never a problem if a fish died when they did it. I’ve caught hundreds of fish deep in the dead middle of summer and 99% of the time they are fine. Now obviously if your fishing tournaments in the summer obviously there is a chance you could kill some of the fish bc the water is so hot ,even with ice.
Let’s get this straight, you made your career and relevance that you’re leveraging now on RU-vid through tournament fishing, but now tournament fishing is killing fish because of FFS because they are catching them deeper? Studies have shown that tournament fishing has nearly zero impact on fish populations. Your feelings and opinions are based on a conversation and fact that you like shallow water fishing, but no data?
I saw it too. I fished a BFL with Joe Fonzi in 2014 and he told me, you know when guys talk about the good ole days? You’re living them right now on Lake Ontario. He was so right.
Some buddy, that you won't name " basically" said that you should talk about this? Haha. Every fish that you release will die at some point. Stay at your own home lake and away from mine. Any lake that is given notoriety by professional bass fishing and the press that goes along with it, will inevitably go downhill. It is not FFS that is the problem it is the human beings that show up after each of these tournaments to depredate the areas that were just advertised. Stop the real time social media and STAY HOME.
Randy has done more harm to tournament fishing and fishing in general then just about anything in the history of the sport! And in ten twenty years from now this will be wrote about the damage he did!
It looks like the guys back in the 90’s only averaged 14-15lbs a day to win at the river. How is it worse now and where do these statistics really come from other than your buddy’s rear end?
We need to change our limit structure on fish. Proper strategy for pond/ lake management is culling/ eating smaller ones while protecting big fish. Rainy Lake is a good example of this. Establish proper slot limits rather than something like 14 and up.
tournaments are the reason FFS exists lol. Randy wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants tournaments to thrive but hates technological advancements that tournaments necessitate. He wants us to be green while he drives all around the country in his truck and boat.
Not true. All Randy is trying to say is that we need to take better care of the resources. Fish can be kept alive better than some tournament anglers are doing it. Some anglers don't want to slow down and take better care of the fish they just want to have their fun, go weigh in a fish that the gills are barely on with no consideration of whether or not the fish survives. There should be some care and giving back to the sport that we love so much. If we just rape and pillage the resource it will decline. Actually I don't even think you should be able to weigh in a dead fish and receive dead fish penalty like some tournaments do. Yes it would be a shame to not be able to weigh in a 7 pounder in a tournament that died but if everybody knew that they could not bring in a dead fish at all then everybody would try a heck of a lot harder to keep their fish alive and healthy and in turn would increase the survival rate a fish that are weighed in at tournaments. Not everybody likes to hear this because it requires more responsibility on their part.
Randy I have fished the saint L river all my life and I live on the saint lawrence river and I very seldom catch a small mouth In less than 20 feet of water and that is the way it's been for years and most of us don't even own f facing sonar me included.
LOWRANCE just signed a multi million dollar deal with MLF < That should make ya sick ! That means FFS aint going away ! Some mlf pro just did a video about st Lawrence going down hill !!😊😊😊
Doom and gloom write a book! You always present an emotional argument. We actually need fish killed off. For centuries Americans caught fish, put them on strings and carried them home and ate them. That rarely occurs anymore and to make it worse we throw them back. Wonder why you don’t see twelve pounders anymore, it’s because today there are a million more one pounders competing for the same food. Most pond owners suffer the same issue, too many fish and biologists tell them to get hundreds of them out of the pond to create healthy fish that can thrive. We here in Alabama have too many does, many just consume food. If you kill a little doe everyone screams when in reality it allows the heard to get bigger and healthier. Stop using Randy logic as a true science!
Common sense and conservation will never take the place of money. Why do you think the attendance at he tourney weigh ins has declined so much in the past 5 or so years? One of the things on my bucket list was to attend a Classic championship weigh in. I got to do that at the Classic in Ft. Worth. What a let down. There are more spectators at a good high school football game in the DFW area than there were at the Classic. That should have told the higher ups at BASS, that something is wrong with our sport. Apparently no one was paying attention.
Been happening on lake Erie for the last 30 years. Fish kills due to tournaments taking smallies out of deep and weigh ins in the rivers. But, the Cormorant birds kill more smallmouth bass in a week than all tournaments in a year. Oh and one more thing there was less loaves of bread in the grocery store because of Forward facing sonar today. And there was only six parking spots because of Ford facing sonar today. I also noticed that the gas at the stations were depleted because of forward facing sonar
You could not have been more wrong about the St Lawrence River. You claimed that the Elite Series would struggle because of FFS and all the dead fish. Boy what a swing and miss. They hammered them. The St Lawrence river is the best right now that it has ever been. Your friend on the BPT should hang it up too.
@@TheREVIEWGUY1-ip1wm Followed bass tournaments for 30 years, fished red mann, bfl, everstarts. Never heard of Josh Jones. All these fish are legal to take home and eat. If it's hurting the population take it up with the states conservation, THEY set the limits.
All this coming from a tournament angler that has caught fish deep and “beat them to death” in rough water. This topic I will never understand coming from u. Sorry
I think the waste of dying fish is disgusting. What if rather than releasing the weigh-in fish to the lake, they were given to the Game Wardens and Fisheries Biologists for care and monitoring and even possible breeding (a la Texas’ share a linker program). The fish that “don’t make it” would at least be iced and donated to those in need and not be wasted. Similar donations are done when Texas Game Wardens confiscate illegally obtained fish and game.
I was up at Smith Lake in Alabama Sunday, they must have had a night tournament because there were 7 dead fish floating around the docks and I didn't check them all. These were all largemouth or spotted bass, probably caught deep and stressed beyond their ability to overcome.
I fish saltwater, mainly inshore and near shore. If I go out to deeper water, it's for trolling kings and mahi, not deep dropping and jigging fish up out of deep water. I catch and release, I don't fish where I know the fish will likely die just getting it to the boat. For people that don't understand what happens, just watch some videos on deepwater fishing in saltwater and see what happens to those fish pulled up from deep water.
