Anglers at all levels have discussed, argued and ranted about the goings on in professional bass fishing this year, but I read some interesting comments through all of this heated debate on what’s affecting tournament fishing. While some folks are leaning on the simple argument that forward facing sonar destroyed competitive fishing, what seems to be more at the heart of the issue is a lot more young anglers are competitive now than used to be the case. One person mentioned on a recent post the possibility of having a senior fishing league, or another league with elder statesmen in it. Which is a much more interesting discussion point. But a question popped into my mind about whether professional fishing should have age limits much like other sports naturally do.
So professional fishing has allowed for anglers to fish into their 70s and 80s since inception. To my knowledge no one 90 or older has fished in a professional tournament. But that begs the question should we cap it? And would capping it make the league any more competitive. So I want to run through some various scenarios and then I’m really interested to see what people think after reading these discussion points on professional fishing being more like other sports.
SHOULD COMPETITIVE FISHING BE MORE LIKE OTHER SPORTS?
The first obvious question is should we even try to treat professional fishing like other sports. Because it’s really not comparative to most sports. For one, most sports naturally age out the competitors. Because the simple fact is most sports require a certain amount of fitness and physicality. And as you get older, you won’t be as fast or as agile as the younger competitors. So you start to “lose a step” in comparison.
At some point, older athletes just can’t keep up with the athleticism of younger athletes and have to retire. That’s a natural way sports foster more competitive leagues with only the most physically gifted competitors still in the sport. A football player gets 10 years if he’s lucky. Sure some get to 20 years, but they are the minority. A basketball player might play 15 or 20 years and has to continually modify his game as his explosiveness diminishes. A pro baseball player can play well into his 30s and still be highly competitive. But there is a drop off at some point.
Because fishing doesn’t require that level of physicality and athletic gifts like most other sports, pro fishermen can stay in the sport for a long time.
A COMPETITIVE CAP MIGHT BE BETTER THAN AGE
Rather than making it age based, should it be a length of time. Because a lot of professional anglers didn’t get into the sport until later in life. So if you don’t start until your 30s or 40s. An age limit would not be as fair a way to maintain competitiveness. In this case, maybe a length of time cap makes more sense.
Would being a competitor for say 20 years be good enough and then you move on to another tour, or create a senior level tour for anglers who have been doing it a long time? I’m certainly not advocating for limiting a man’s ability to make a living. I’m just curious what other folks think about how professional fishing should approach keeping the best anglers in the leagues and weeding out the less competitive anglers.
SHOULD THERE SIMILARLY BE AN AGE START LIMIT
There of course is the flip side to the coin, where a lot of other sports say you have to be a certain age before you can become a pro in that sport. That was mostly done to stop immature high school kids from coming into professional leagues and having a myriad of problems as a result.
Bass fishing is not immune to this as we saw several young anglers DQed in tournaments this year for making mistakes they should have known about. So that begs the question: do you let anglers come into professional fishing out of high school or just a year or two of college or do you say they have to spend so much time at the mid-tier to become eligible for the top tours?
Obviously things like qualifying through the BASS Opens and mechanisms like this help mitigate this to some degree, but a guy can still fish one year there and be in the top tour the next year. So there is some level of paying dues that seems like it could be a good thing to make the professional fishing at the top level better.
WHAT ABOUT A SENIOR FISHING TOUR?
A senior tour is interesting to me. I think it could be a fun watch. I think it could also play around a lot more with different formats. How cool would a flipping tournament be with Andy Morgan and some of the other legendary flippers in the sport? I’ve always dreamed of some one off tournaments like that. A pro frog tournament, pro flipping tournament, etc.
But I think having an older tour would be an interesting dynamic in fishing. We have high school fishing, college fishing, weekend angler tournaments like BFLs, mid-tier tournaments like BASS Opens and Toyota Series and then the top levels of the core of pro bass fishing. But then we don’t go the other direction for an older anglers tour. I think even if you just had a few tournaments for long-time anglers, it could be a cool dynamic. For the record, I’m certainly not going to call Andy Morgan old to his face.
Part of me fears if we run off guys too quickly from the top levels, do we ever end up with another Rick Clunn with such a storied bass fishing career. I wonder if we don’t have guys in the sport for a long time do we lose some of our history. Those thoughts make me like the idea of a pro senior tour a lot more. Something where we can continue to root for our heroes but we don’t have to expect them to go 80mph in a boat and go at a break-neck pace with technology.
DO WE JUST STICK WITH RE-QUALIFYING MEASURES
Of course, then there is the question of do we just stick with the qualifying measures we have. I know some guys are upset about how easy it is to lose a spot on tour and how hard it is to get it back, let alone keep when you get back because of a rolling 3 years measurement. So you could ultimately lose your player’s card, fight your way back up through the qualifying ranks again. But then you’re severely handicapped because your bad two years that got you kicked out last time, still count against you now that you re-qualified again with a rolling 3 years deal.
Part of the dilemma is that one circuit is narrowing the field sizes down, so it’s a highly competitive, easier to manage (and afford) tour. It’s well known that keeping 150 anglers satisfied is infinitely harder than keeping 50 anglers satisfied. Problem with narrowing the field is you can’t cut a large portion of the field for not re-qualifying and bring in a whole new crop of anglers who might not be any better. So you either reduce the number of guys you cut each season, which means the same guys will get to stay for a long time after that. Or you keep rotating big swaths of anglers in and out and the consistency will be lacking.
Professional bass fishing seems to cover new ground from year to year, and more questions seem to arise from season to season. Not trying to stir any pots here. But I think a lot of discussions to keep the circuits competitive, fresh, reward performance and ability and offer a good watch are the goals for everyone.
The paths to get there, however, seem less easily defined as we go. It’s no easy task to get hundreds of pro anglers to agree on the same things. Everyone is at a different place in their life and their career and all of these decisions affect a lot of people’s livelihoods. I honestly don’t think people running tournaments or fishing as a pro want anything bad to happen to the circuits or the other anglers. Their is no malicious intent as much as people like to paint that picture. There are always a few outliers. But I think generally speaking, anglers and circuits want pro bass fishing as a whole to be successful.
I think these are difficult decisions to make on all sides. I think striving for consistency, clearly defined rules and enforcement, and level competition that refreshes from year to year are all good things to strive for. And I think new ideas like team fishing can breathe some new life into circuits and angler careers as well.
I’d love to see your thoughts on all of this on Facebook and hear some other ideas on how to make for better fishing competitions.
