The Great Seven Year Itch, Lake Fork Style

The winter periods from '86-'87 through '92-'93 may be the most unbelievable fishing experience the country and certainly Texas has ever seen in terms of giant largemouth bass. In those seven winter periods Lake Fork produced record sized bass in numbers that may never be seen again. So what really came from Fork from winter 1986 through Spring 1993?

Inside the astounding numbers

• The SIX (6) largest bass ever caught in Texas.
• TEN(10) out of the FIFTEEN (15) Largest bass ever caught in Texas.
• A full FIFTEEN (15) out of the TWENTY FIVE (25) largest bass ever caught in Texas.
• One Half of the FIFTY (50) Largest Bass of all time in Texas.

To help put these numbers in prospective consider that since 1987 Budweiser, and now Toyota have operated a joint program with Texas Parks & Wildlife called the ShareLunker program. The program operates to harvest and research giant Texas Bass. Any person catching a fish weighing 13lbs or more from Texas waters can have the fish picked up by TPWD and entered into the program.

The research program lists now over 475 fish of at least 13lbs. No surprise is that Lake Fork has more than half of the largest fish in the program. That is half of the fish over 13lbs all caught in one lake! The other lakes in the Top Five all time ShareLunker entries are Alan Henry (25), Sam Rayburn (23), Conroe (16) and Choke Canyon (12).

So how do these lakes stack up against the TWENTY FIVE monsters of greater than 15lbs caught in fork from winter 1986 through spring 1993?

Combined these four lakes have produced only three (3) fish large enough to be in the top 50, EVER!
And as for the current king Lake Falcon, it is yet to produce a fish large enough to crack the top 50.

The seven year period at Lake Fork is something that may never again be duplicated by any Bass fishing lake anywhere. Just the idea that any body of water produced over 25 black bass weighing more than 15.30 pounds in that amount of time is unreal.

Sometimes the Reeltruth is hard to believe!


http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fishboat/fish/programs/fishrecords/freshwater/top50_largemouth.phtml

Give ALL the money back, or get out!

Why in the heck do bass fishermen put up with the outright abuse by Tournament Directors and sponsors of bass fishing tournaments? To every tournament director and promoter out there I say to you, if you can't pay back 95% or better of the money throughout the year then let someone else handle the job. What are you doing for the fishermen when you keep the fisherman's money. Imagine an event that promotes itself and then uses the entry fee money to pay expenses. "Excuse me Mr. Tyson, we are gonna need you to pay an entry fee of 1.5 million and we will be paying you back 80%, would that be okay?" "Yes Mr. Gordon, we were thinking if you wrap your car in these ridiculous colors and wear this clown outfit and get all the other guys to do the same so that the corporations can make money and then if you don't mind if you could all put your entry fee in a pot and we will be giving you back 90%."
Good Grief Charlie Brown how far does this have to go? We can't keep giving the money makers a pass. If you are a promoter you go out and you show corporate and small business sponsors how being a part of your event MAKES them money. They in turn then pay you and you ADD value to the entry fees of your participants. You remember them, the fishermen that buy the boats, trucks, rods, reels, tackle, gas, hotel rooms and pay your ridiculous "membership fees."
Surely we dumb ol hicks could find us a local constable and pay him to hold our money at the ramp and then we could simply payback 99% of entry fees. Heck I bet if we work as hard as a coon with a shiny thing we might even figure out how to make a schedule and get word out on the Internet! Seems like anyone can write stuff on here now!
Let me take a crack at this here promotion.

SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY ( Say it like an old radio spot for a good drag race and it sounds so cool)

Lake Guntersville, $150.00 per team entry fee, $10.00 optional big bass pot. Take off at safe light and weigh -in at three p.m.

I tell ya boys this is tough, I almost forgot p.m.! Imagine the confusion when all us rednecks showed up to weigh in 20 hours later in the dark. Sure glad we have tournament directors!

Now let's see we will OVER first place winner so that people get all dollar bill eyed. Then we will have a points system BUT make the championship open to anyone who fishes all our "events" and really get em good we will make them pay an entry for the championship. But maybe best of all the Point System we will have NO Payout! Why, because we gave it all away at each "event."
(Look for a later blog post on why in the hell we can't get a real money payout for points and really fishing well ALL year not just getting lucky once!)

Now if I have everything right I am done. Unless of course a real promoter should spend forty hours a week looking for corporate and small business sponsors to pay more than 100% of entry fees. Unless someone can tell me why tournament directors and promoters shouldn't work the hours the rest of us do to enjoy this sport. Oh and don't even start in about all the hours at the event, driving there, setting up! That is manual labor that an $8.00 an hour employee could do and if that is all you do for the money, my point is proven! If you want to be a promoter, a difference maker, a leader, well then GET TO WORK.

Tournament fishermen should right now and I mean TODAY demand that any tournament they enter pay back MORE than 90%, pay at least 1 in 6 finishers and have a director on site that can explain their efforts to help the FISHERMEN not just the trail itself!
It is easy to understand that if you are fishing for less than the entry fees that YOU provided, Someone else is laughing all the way to the bank.

And oh yes fishermen, if you think that it is okay to NOT support the companies, people and individuals that put CASH money into fishing then you are part of the reason that you are paying to play with yourself!

WHAT A 100,000 Dollar Pitiful JOKE!

Are some of you people in Texas kidding me? Seriously nobody saw this one coming? A guy that can't catch a fish to save his life in B.A.S.S. or when cameras are on him is then caught cheating, WHAT A DANG SURPRISE!
He is the all time leading money winner in a Tourney Trail, they should be ashamed if not down right humiliated for being complacent in a CRIME. And if they did run the sorry sack off then why not publish it and sing it from the rafters. Tell us all that ROBBY ROSE was removed from our tournaments because he is a CHEAT! No proof my rear. You apologists can say whatever you want but here is what I know, my grandma taught me the proof is in the pudding..............

HERE IS HOW THIS PUDDING TASTES!

21 B.A.S.S. tournaments and not a single top 5 finish or should I say not a single top 20 finish! And this is the All Time leading money winner for Bass Champs? Apologize all you want, he is a cheater and someone knew it! Someone kicked him out of some tournament or club or just their dang house before and somebody should have done it again! You can't worry that some individual will get a low down scummy attorney and sue you for libel or slander, NO WORRY, the truth is always a defense to those claims!!

Guide or Tournament Fisherman?

Should a guide be a tournament proven fisherman or just good at his home waters? I have asked many guide clients and it seems that the answer is most people want a Guide that can teach them something about fishing.
If that is the case then wouldn't the guides tournament resume be more important than his latest catch photos on his home lake?
What about a guide that has never won a dime other than his home lake. Can he teach you anything other than where there are a few fish biting on his home water?
I believe that a real fisherman can catch fish in places other than his home waters. Maybe without his brushpiles and definitely under the pressure of fishing for money!

Next time you are thinking about a guide trip I suggest that if you want to learn from a pro then check out his stats and tournament history. It is very easy to do,

Try these links for Angler Look Ups:

http://www.flwoutdoors.com/ap/index.cfm?type=bass

&

http://proxy.espn.go.com/outdoors/bassmaster/media/search

Good Luck with all your fishing!

What do Bill Wilcox, Harold Allen, Dicky Newberry & Todd Castedine have in common?

What they have in common is they have probably won more money on Sam Rayburn than most fishermen have won in their entire careers. Maybe even more than Robbie Rose stole in his. But for 2010 what they have in common is they are yet to cash a check at Sam Rayburn.
And before you go thinking that they you could do better, forget it. Sam Rayburn is just tough right now! When these guys don't catch em you can be sure that luck is playing as big a factor as skill in the early part of 2010. The results of the early season tournaments say so as well. Bass-N-Bucks is won with four fish. http://www.bassnbucks.com/StandingsJan-16th Bass Champs has no 20lb bag and second place is a four fish bag. http://www.basschamps.com/basschamps/results.cfm?tournament_id=93&type=team&yearSelected=2010 That sure does not say that a fisherman is on quality fish and really catching them. It says that they got some amount of lucky to catch the fish they did.
Sam Rayburn is suffering from exactly what the rest of Texas is suffering from, COLD! The air that covered East Texas two weeks ago was the coldest in near 13 years. The water temp on Wednesday Jan. 6Th was 47 to 49 degrees and stayed that low or lower through Sunday Jan. 16, 2010. The Bass-N-Bucks tournament was one of the coldest water temps starts on record. Fishing was slow and a lot of the best East Texas fisherman struggled to 3 or 4 bites all day.
The Bass Champs tourney did follow a week of warming weather but it was just not enough to bring the females into the grass. The buck males did make it to shallow water and provided many 9lb bags. But the big females remained just out of reach for most fishermen. I spoke with several of the competitors and many had chunked rattletraps all day and almost none had more than 5 or 6 bites.
The cold has just been the winner this spring. Current water temps as of today are ranging between 52 & 55 degrees and another COLD front is headed in this Wednesday, just in time for the Media Bass Super Teams Event.
Mother Nature is having her day, but you can bet that the big names will start to figure this lake out soon and watch for em to be cashing checks in Media and FLW the week following.