From Ron Brooks,
Your Guide to Saltwater Fishing.
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I picked up the Sunday paper this weekend, and as I usually do, I turned immediately to the sports section, more specifically, the outdoors page. Each Sunday our Outdoors Editor does a full page - sometimes two - on an outdoor activity. I was looking for some content I could use later, and this week he dealt with fishing tournaments.

The article was about an upcoming king mackerel tournament. Actually, the article talked about a number of tournaments coming this summer. Most area boat ramps will have at least one tournament launching there on most of the upcoming summer weekends.

I remembered my involvement - heck my obsession at one time - with bass fishing tournaments. When I began, the limit was ten fish per person. It is now five fish or even less on some lakes.

Kingfish tournaments used to be won on total weight. Hundreds of pounds of fish were brought to the scales, all of them dead. Most now permit only one fish per day to be brought to the scales, a significant change!

The thing that most caught my attention was simply the huge number of saltwater tournaments being held. Makes me wonder if we saltwater anglers are suffering from what I call the Ray Scott syndrome. Ray founded Bass Anglers' Sportsman Society and put bass fishing tournaments in the mainstream. That fever has now permanently set in on the saltwater scene.

I certainly hope that we as conscientious anglers can control and conserve while we test our skills competing against each other. Killing fish for money is simply not the right thing to do! The days of bringing a ton of fish to the dock are over, my friends!