Retirement...who is next?

[F14A-B]

Somebody was using cameras during the last event I’m pretty sure I heard.. 

 

Is that a thing also with the elite guys? 
MLF ? 

[TnRiver46]

Both use aqua vu in practice 

 

and floggers in the tourneys 

[fishballer06]

Did MLF ban the floggers? 

 

I don't follow MLF at all, but I remember a few years ago they had a northern event during the smallmouth spawn and they murdered them using the floggers. Then every Joe Shmoe at the local lakes had one in their boat. 

[TOXIC]

I remember floggers from 20 years ago on St Clair.  Saw some homemade out of warning cones.  😂

[gim]

Excuse me but what the sh** is a flogger?

[AlabamaSpothunter]

A flogger is basically a reverse periscope, it just allows you to break the surface tension of the water, and peer beneath it.   To my knowledge they are only effective for SM bed fishing.  

The last major derby I saw them used extensively was during the MLF BPT Cayuga event that had so much controversy 

 

LureCraft Flogger Underwater Viewer | Tackle Warehouse

[GReb]

On some of these places ie SLR, Chick, Guntersville, Harris, Champlain, etc. what isn’t a community hole? 
 

At this point between the local knowledge and the pros visiting every single year there’s not much undiscovered juice. The regurgitated schedule is a problem that needs to be addressed. 

[Tennessee Boy]

On 8/21/2024 at 7:53 PM, gimruis said:

Yes, I think it’s called Target Lock.

 

@AlabamaSpothunter probably knows more about it than me.

I’ve had Target Lock for almost two years.   I’ve never seen it on a pros boat.  There’s a reason why.  I’ve considered taking it off.  It allows you to control your FFS separate from your trolling motor so you can use trolling motor features like spot lock and FFS at the same time.   The problem is,  you control it with buttons which is a pain.   You can set it to point in the same direction as your trolling motor which is how I use it most of the time but that kind of defeats the purpose and it turns slower than the trolling motor.   Also being mounted separately from the trolling motor means that the trolling motor blocks it when it’s pointed toward the TM.  It does do a fairly good job of locking on to a target like a stump and that looks amazing in their videos and scary to people who don’t like technology.   I don’t use it very often.  There are lots of targets out there.  They are not hard to find and track.  Reaching down to engage target lock on something is more trouble than it’s worth most of the time.  In crappie fishing I could see where it might be more useful.  
 

Concerning locking on to a fish.   That sure sounds scary.  I expect to see it soon and I think it will be fun.   Will it change professional fishing?   I can’t think of a single time where I’ve seen a pro chase a single fish for a significant amount of time.   Josh Jones has popularized the idea that you just put the trolling motor down and go until you see a fish.  Did you ever notice that in the “scoping” tournament you always see anglers bunched up together in an area?   If they were just chasing random fish with their electronics on these enormous lakes they would never see each other.  It’s still about finding the places that hold fish just like it’s always been.  If they held tournaments in the dead of winter in freezing temperatures you might see more guys chasing roaming fish around.

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Did you watch the Lake Fork Elite Series event this year?

 

So many anglers during that event targeted and followed fish.   

 

I think it was Mckinney who lost a monster on a jerkbait, and then proceeded to follow that same fish around until it bit again, and he recovered the jerkbait.

 

I've seen these guys follow fish around quite a bit with live sonar.   

 

It's no different than bed fishing, some anglers are better than others at reading when a fish is ready to go, either way though the technology gives anglers the same ability to target and chase a fish for as long as they desire, sometimes at the angler's own expense.  

 

Then you have the whole snagging debate with FFS, especially when jerkbait fishing.  I'm not one of them, but some people thought guys were snagging giants during that Fork event.  

[F14A-B]

1 hour ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

Did you watch the Lake Fork Elite Series event this year?

 

So many anglers during that event targeted and followed fish.   

 

I think it was Mckinney who lost a monster on a jerkbait, and then proceeded to follow that same fish around until it bit again, and he recovered the jerkbait.

 

I've seen these guys follow fish around quite a bit with live sonar.   

 

It's no different than bed fishing, some anglers are better than others at reading when a fish is ready to go, either way though the technology gives anglers the same ability to target and chase a fish for as long as they desire, sometimes at the angler's own expense.  

 

Then you have the whole snagging debate with FFS, especially when jerkbait fishing.  I'm not one of them, but some people thought guys were snagging giants during that Fork event.  

You're exactly right, he must have missed that tournament but I didn’t. 
 

As far as the jerkbait issue, I made a statement on here about fish being hooked in the belly or back and can’t see how BASS sees that as a fish eating a bait. At any rate that’s just me..

[Tennessee Boy]

1 hour ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I think it was Mckinney who lost a monster on a jerkbait, and then proceeded to follow that same fish around until it bit again, and he recovered the jerkbait.

I do remember him getting his jerkbait back.   I don’t remember that he immediately began following the fish after it broke off or that he followed it for a significant amount of time.  It can be done and I’m sure the pros do it occasionally to some degree.  I don’t think it’s a productive strategy most of the time because you invest time trying to catch one fish that probably won’t bite and might not even be a bass.   On YouTube they are always bass and they always bite.  Chasing an individual fish begins to make sense when you have a solid 5 fish limit in the livewell.  McKinney was bringing 30lb bags to the scale.  When anything under 6 lbs won’t help you then it makes more sense to go chasing a big fish when you see it.  
 

Take a look at this video from Lake Fork at about the 3 minute mark.  Tyler Rivet catches a 9 pounder off a tree.  He says that there are two more like it on the same tree.  He says it’s the same group of fish that were “over there” earlier that he couldn’t get to bite.  This is very representative of my experiences fishing with FFS ( except the fish are 1 lb instead of 9 lbs 😆).  The technology makes it possible to know what’s happening down there.   You know what tree to cast to.  He could have cast to every one of the 100 trees around him and possibly caught the same fish.  FFS made him more efficient than the guy that makes random cast at trees.  It clearly gives him an advantage over that guy.   In the end you have to be able to catch the fish that is on the tree whether you knew the fish was there or not.  It does not take more skill to make random cast to find fish.  It just takes more time and luck.   I understand that for people that can’t afford FFS or people that don’t enjoy fiddling with electronics while fishing,  it doesn’t seem fair.  It’s not fair but it’s not so easy that anyone can do it.

 

 

[Pogues2300]

On 8/19/2024 at 2:35 PM, A-Jay said:

 

A man can dream.

I might even send him a nice card.

A-Jay

Nah he’s just hitting his prime in his “aluminum rig”!

[A-Jay]

18 minutes ago, Pogues2300 said:

Nah he’s just hitting his prime in his “aluminum rig”!

Me Too !

A-Jay

[Dan N]

I would agree on all the names mentioned in the first post. 
well , maybe not the last guy. 
so, are all the others out of the elites next year??

[gim]

38 minutes ago, Dan N said:

so, are all the others out of the elites next year??

Yes, unless BASS offers them a special exemption, or they qualify another way. Like through the Bassmaster Opens.