Stirring the pot…

I fished a local Bass tourney on April 26th and saw some things that troubled me. I am looking for some input on whether or not something can or should be done in how tourneys are scheduled. Especially on the river system.

As it is on the river system here in the pool 7, 8, 9, and so on, we are on the threshold of the spawn. It is my personal opinion that pulling these fish from their spawning habitat is a bad thing. Many large female Smallmouth and Largemouth were hauled from pools 7 & 9 to pool 8. These fish were not transported back to their respected pools, instead they were dumped in an undisclosed area, in most cases far from their spawning grounds. Chances are, these fish will not make it back to their spawning grounds in time or shape to spawn.

My question is, can these early tournaments have a long-term negative impact on our fishery? Or are the fish caught a ‘drop in the well’ so to speak when you look at the the numbers of bass in the system?

I would also like to know how people feel about these early tournaments.
i.e. Should they be allowed to happen? Should the DNR step in to restrict these early tournaments before they get out of hand? It will be the 10th of May and there will have been 3 large tournaments for bass on pools 7, 8, & 9.

Please don’t feel I am only worried about Bass here. These questions I posed are applicable to all the species we fish for on all water systems.

I totally agree and while I’m no biologist and dont know the effect of this on spawning I think one can even go far enough as to say this impacts the fishing on a pool all year and not just during the spawn. I mainly fish pool 9 and each year the quantity and quality of smallmouth we catch seem to go down. I often thought it may be due to the increased tournament traffic coming from the Lacrosse area. It seems that on any given weekend if you cover enough of a pool you will run into people fishing 2-3 different tournaments. I think one tournament a pool a weekend would be an option as well as some sort of effort to return or maintain the fish to their home pool. I dont want to sound like i am against tourneys as I usually try to fish a couple a year but it almost seems to be getting out of hand.

I have heard a lot of grumbling. Locals around here do not like tournament fishermen taking fish from this pool. I can’t see where a couple hundred bass per year get transplanted in another pool would cause any harm. It does however leave the idea of tournaments in a bad light with a lot of people, fisherpeople.
I believe that seasons should be closed durring the spawn, for any game species.

I believe that until their is evidence that this transporting of fish during tourneys has a negative effect on the population that the rules should remain as they are now. I hate extra regulations unless their proven to be really needed. That being said it would be nice if tournament directors addressed this issue themselves when setting up their tournaments. They could restrict fishing from lock to lock and they could set their tournaments so they wouldn’t affect spawning if they chose to do so.

With outbreaks of Largemouth Bass Virus and another disease last year on Pools 10 and 11 I would think that tournament directors would be pro-active in trying to not put any more stress on the fish than they have too. I know there’s already a percentage of people that are blaming tournaments for these diseases.

My thinking is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I don’t fish those pools, but the fishing further up is as good as I’ve seen it. There are allready too many “feel good” laws out there and until there is solid info showing a great harm beingdone to the fishery, let things be. My 2 cents.