More Biological Evidence Supporting Our Cause

[Eric]

Dan,
If you haven't already, check this out from the Bassmaster website.

TEXT
Federation fish

At the recent CITGO BASS Federation Championship in Tulsa, the Keystone Lake bass were the main attraction - before, during and after the tournament.

"Department biologists along with Oklahoma Aquarium biologists held all of the first day catch from the tournament in large circular quarantine tanks for one week following the event," reported Gene Gilliland, senior fisheries biologist for the Wildlife Department and a BASS club member.

"The good news is that each one of those fish lived and was released back into Lake Keystone.

"This just shows that proper fish handling can result in excellent, even 100-percent, survival rates in a bass tournament."

Gilliland added that you don't have to be a high-stakes tournament angler to practice proper release techniques.
TEXT

This may be more quality information to share with the not so informed people to correct their beliefs about bass fishing and bass tournaments.

This quote is taken from the Inside BASS section under the HEADLINES.

[djkimmel]

Thanks very much Eric. I hadn't seen that.

This is a common topic some use against us bass tournament anglers. They say we make all these high and mighty claims about our release rates and then a whole bunch of our bass die later even more than people see.

I say if we do our jobs right, very few bass die and they can be caught again. We do need to keep improving our handling of bass, especially during the day in each of our boats, but not to make people happy who don't like us, but for ourselves and the bass that we like to catch so much.