HS Bass Nationals

[ollie]

I almost went down for this one until I heard how many boats were involved. I had heard over 500 entries on the lake for this one. Brought in a lot of money for Grove I'm sure. Looks like it went off well too. 

16th High School Fishing World Finals & National Championship 2025 Grand Lake, OK – Student Angler Federation

Only problem is, the day after weight in large bass were washing up on shore in the cove where all of them were released. As in a LOT of fish and nice ones were washing up on peoples shoreline. Not so great after all. I only know about this because I know people who live down there and they confirmed this as well. Now, I am not naive enough to know that there will be some killed after the weigh in, but we are taking about literally hundreds of bass washing up on shore. One person said they counted at least 40 in a 200 yard stretch and another home reported about the same and that is only 2 that have said anything. I don't really know how they release them after a tournament this size, but I do know they just went around the cove where the weigh in was and put them all in that area. Curious, and again, I know this will happen, but has there been a huge kill like this at pro tournament before?

[Quillback]

There have been fish kills before.  It's going to happen when you have summer tourneys that go on all day, it's hard on fish to be in a live well all day in warm water.  The BASS circuit typically fish in the spring, or they go up north in the summer, so you don't see big fish kills from one of their tourneys.  MLF does a catch, measure and release deal so not a whole lot of mortality there either.

[snagged in outlet 3]

I'm gonna say it.  Haven't tourneys abused our resources enough already?  

[Dutch]

Back when the Heartland series was going my boss ran the “catch and release” boat.  He was short handed and talked one of my salesmen into going with him to the tournament on Grand.  When he came back the salesman said most of the fish were dead.  They slit their stomachs and dropped them over the side of the boat.