Tournament Fishing Pressure

[techo]

Room for everyone is very true, and yes it is a hassle for some of us locals, but no big deal.. Just a note, fishing around the DAM area and Up the white river really suck, need to just make sure you spend alot of time in the Aunts Creek Area and up the James..

Don

Oh Gosh!

[dtrs5kprs]

Oh Gosh!

Just to make it easier for folks, there are also not any fish around 13HWY, especially in Schooner, Fisher, or Whites. Definitely none in Little Cow, ever. The few skinny stragglers in those places have all been sore mouthed anyway.

+++ on Aunts. Lots of brown jig fish there.

***And as far as pressure, as I'm sure some of the others here can attest to, this lake is positively private compared to LOZ.

[Trav]

In my opinion,

Fishing pressure from tournaments, weekend anglers, guides, locals, etc is the biggest factor to consider when catching fish. They get sore lipped after catch and release, but will resume feeding soon after.

As for the spawn, they gotta do it somewhere. Its gonna happen no matter what.

Unless they wind up in a cooler.

I hate fishing pressure,

therefore I try to fish on weekday afternoons if possible, but this is the exception to the rule.

Like many of you, weekends are the only chance I get to fish.

I never fish on weekends. You guys should know the fish never bite Tuesday through Thursday....The fish save all the fun for you weekend guys.

Seriously though...I don't mind sharing the water with fishermen as long as they aren't running all over the place like chickens with their heads cut off.

It is the Joy riders, Water skiers and Jet skis which bothers me the most.

[skeeter]

IN MY OPINION, it would be nice to not have tournaments during the spawn. It just can't be good to pull fish off their nests and haul them miles away. But tournaments have been around 40 years or more and we still have lots of fish, so like Mr. Bill said, plenty for everyone. Let's just go fishin' and be happy we are blessed with the opportunity to do so and have such a heavenly place to practice our passion.

Thank you Sir for stating that opinion.

Being a Bass angler since way before tournaments started attracting so many participants and grew so numerous, that has definitely become my opinion also.

It sure does seem counterproductive to remove the resource we all treasure from their attempts to further the species.

"Plenty for everyone" is what commercial Cod fishermen in the Western North Atlantic thought too. Those schools of Cod were so numerous our Boat's skipper used to "hide" from sonar underneath them during NATO war games. No more !

[rps]

On the assumption you will C and R, I suggest the following. When the pressure affects the fish, switch locations. Fish BS or Beaver, or up here at the ugly top end of the lake. 50+ river miles from the weigh in makes a huge difference. A difference in the number of tournament fishermen, not in the numbers or quality of fish.