Starting a Small Craft Tournament Trail

[NateFollmer]

Has anyone had any experience with this? I was thinking of starting a small craft tournament trail for all the small lakes in the area. I think it would be a great opportunity for people who don't have a bass boat, but want to get a small taste of tournament fishing. Plus, I wanted to start something up that didn't involve joining clubs and paying a bunch of fees.

I'm trying to get organized at the moment and wondered if anyone could give me any potential ro***s they have run into before.

I was thinking of allowing kayaks, canoes, and small electric only boats in and doing a 'paper' tournament. I can't really come up with any good way of doing this though. The honor system will just fail and I don't want to have people going back to checkpoints once they catch a fish. I was thinking of having a few people that would man a section of the lake and go to the people once they catch a fish, but I don't know if I could come up with enough people to help...

Any ideas would be helpful!

Thanks!

[zerofivenismo]

You might want to check tinboats for some ideas.  They have a few jon boat club tourneys with rules, website, etc.  Good luck! 

[NateFollmer]

Thanks! I totally forgot about tinboats!

If anyone is in the Pa region and would be interested in something like this, please let me know. We have plenty of lakes in the area to get this rolling!

[J Francho]

Digital cameras, standardized ruler, and AMI calculator.

[NateFollmer]

Digital cameras, standardized ruler, and AMI calculator.

I thought about that too, but I wanted to make it as simple as possible for the people. I guess that wouldn't be too much to ask that everyone had a camera, but it may be hard trying to take photos of fish in a kayak...

[J Francho]

Digital cameras, standardized ruler, and AMI calculator.

I thought about that too, but I wanted to make it as simple as possible for the people. I guess that wouldn't be too much to ask that everyone had a camera, but it may be hard trying to take photos of fish in a kayak...

There's already a standard in place, and for big time cash and prizes.  Do a google for kayak bass fishing, and check it out.  As far as resources for tournaments, this is where you have to do some legwork.  Acquiring sponsors should be no problem, if you look in the right places.  Kayak fishing is in explosion mode right now, and many companies are looking to get in.  I bet you could get a place to supply standardized rulers easy.  Money for digicams is probably out there as well.

[SoFlaBassAddict]

Man, I'd love to see something like this happen in south Florida.  I've gotta start searching around to see if it already exists, or start doing a little researching myself.

[NateFollmer]

Thanks for the advice Francho. I knew kayaking was getting more popular, just never knew they had such tournaments out there already. Guess I needed to refine my search on google, all I was getting was junk when I was searching for small craft tournaments and such. When you add the word Kayak and Tournament, google seems to find a ton of good stuff!