I am not a money tournament fisherman but do hear about “Networking”. I assume that is when a close bunch of guys get together and prefish a body of water, then shares their spots/presentations/etc with each other before the actual tournament starts.
Some questions as to how networking works:
– Is this considered ethical?
– How does one become a member of a network?
– Are their published guidelines for setting up a network and rules to govern the network members?
– Are the names of network members published, or is it a tightly held secret?
– What are the sizes of the typical networks?
– Is a bigger network usually better?
– Do networks that fish major circuits invite local fishermen into their group?
– Is splitting up winning among network members against tournament rules? If so, that could easily are circumvented.
– Can a person belong to more that one network in the same circuit?
– What if one of the guys in a network doesn’t share all his information with the others, gives misleading information, or tells non-network guys about the information shared in a network? Is he ejected from that network and put on a black ball list to be banned from all futures networks?
– How does an individual fisherman compete against a network of guys sharing every detail?
I share fishing information with various friends, but would not call it a network as we usually fish for fun or just a hunk of wood. But it would be interesting to get a perspective on tournament networking.
Dave Gulczinski