This not an opinion piece, but I'm just recount a chain of events that happened a few years back regarding the OP.
First a little back story:
The TWRA had been conducting research into the catch and release program from local tournaments. This research involved actual RF fish tagging.
This at the time had only been done in Canada and the results there were fantastic survival rates. The results in Tennessee were eye-popping. A vast majority of fish over 5 lbs turned up dead when the water temp was above 70 degrees. I don't think anyone expect that...but fact is fact. In God we trust all others bring data.
I was contacted by Bobby Wilson (then director of fisheries) to be part of a think tank and have a discussion about tournaments. A side from the fish survival problem...there were other issues about ramp access and overcrowding. This group of people were avid fishermen, guides and tournament directors.
One thing that came up was to make ramps wider and make more parking. This was thought of as a good idea by everyone.
When it came to the fish survival rate, I remember suggesting to one of the East Tennessee tournament directors that all the live wells should have a recycle/pump out/aerator pump. I stated a white paper from a Texas group on how this really increased the survival rate. I was told that not everyone has that much money to modify there live wells. I said, "Its a $20 pump!".
I could see then that any kind of suggestions were not going to be seen in any kind of good light.
One solution that got a little traction was to have tournaments over X amount of boats register that tournament with the state. With that data...people could log in and see what lake may be crowded and what ramp may be crowded.
The state was going to do this and had a dev team working on the code.
Then things got ugly. One of the members of the group was local guide Jim Duckwotrh. He started getting threatening messages left on windshield at the ramps. The group disbanded and that was the end of that.
