Possible to run a tourney without Livewells??

[arul]

Hi all,

My group of 8 friends are wanting to have a tournament among ourselves on a small lake.  We all just have canoes or kayaks.  Does anyone have any tips for such a scenario?  I am mainly concerned about how to handle the fish...  Would it be okay for everyone just to keep them on a stringer off the side of the boat?  Or would this put too much stress on the fish, leading to deaths?  

The fishing window will be 5 hours, so the worst case scenario is a bass would get toted around the lake via stringer for that time.  The last thing we want is a fish kill, but we want to have a tourney and have no boats with livewells...

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Stephen Mick]

Give each guy a small digital scale to take with them, along with a digital camera. Let them weigh and photo the fish on the water, then show off what they caught at "weigh-in."

--SM

[Catt]

On one web site where I was an assistant manager we did an on-line tournament where all participants used a cloth rulers you know the ones used by seamstress. Measure the fish's length & girth, taking pictures of each, & then use Glenn's on-line fish calculator.

[arul]

can you link the weight calculator?  thanks!

[Catt]

http://www.bassresource.com/bassfishing/fishcalculator.html

[bassdocktor]

Some college clubs have paper tournaments where they use the golden rule ruler with the possible fish weight printed on it. They would use that to write down and then count their 5 heaviest bass. They paired up so each catch could be verified.

[thetr20one]

Have each man bring his own digital scale. Take a two pound certified weight and note each scales difference in weight. Run a paper tourney writing each of the fish weights and length. Add the best five as a limit and there is your tourney. Do us, the fish and yourselves a favor and don't try to keep bass on a stringer or a basket. They are meant to hold fish until it is time to get the fillet knife not keep them alive.

[yossarian]

I recently read about a tournament on another fishing website, primarily devoted to river fishing & kayaks, where they simply used lengths instead of weight.

Using those ruler stickers, you snap a digital pic of each fish caught, clearly showing head tail and measurement.  Longest cumulative inch total for a 5 limit won the tourney.  

[arul]

Thanks all for the great insight.  We are going with a paper tourney.  Going to calibrate everyone's scales before the tourney.  Everyone will keep a log of all the fish they catch, at the end count the best 5, and go with the partner/photo/honor verification system.

We are thinking about also implementing a weight scale point system, which may cut down on the possibility of inaccuracies due to different scales and reader errors.  

Something like:

0-.99 lb= 5 points, 1-1.99 lbs = 10 pts, 2-2.99 lbs = 15 pts, etc...  Unless the fish happens to be slotted right on the bracket boundary, it will take need for fine tuned calibrated weighing out of the equation.

[Shad_Master]

Another option might be to have a paper tournament based on fish length rather than weight - this is what our club has done for years.  The minimum length is 12" and fish are measured and then released.  The points go up as the fish get bigger.  If you are interested, I can send you the point counts.

Another option was one that I saw last week while another club was fishing a tournament on the same lake as ours.  The had a weigh boat, when someone caught a fish, they put it in the livewell and raised a flag.  The weigh boat came over, weighed the fish and let 'em go.  Not real sure how all this worked, but it was interesting.