How things work at one of the Youth Tournaments.
The club tries to do as many Youth Tournaments a s possible. Part of that
putting on tournament is understanding how we actually do things. We have a
couple of different type of Tournaments, one is a Golden Rule Tournament, the
other is a regular tournament where the teams catch the fish and hold them in
their live wells until weigh in time, at which time they are released.
With a
Golden Rule or a regular Tournament, the boats are set up with Two Youth Members
and One Boater. The Boat limit is 5 fish. The Youth members are allowed to catch
and cull up to a total of 4 fish, in any combination (numbers and Largemouth or
Smallmouth). The boater is allowed to catch and cull up one fish. The boater’s
fish does not count towards the Big Fish, only the Team weight. The Big Fish has
to come from one of the Youth members. With a Golden Rule
tournament, the Teams are given a worksheet which is just like your live well.
They measure the fish, by 1/4 " increments and fill in the circle under the
respective angler’s name. We encourage the Youth anglers to do most of the
measuring, it is their tournament. Measure the fish, mouth closed.
Just like a live well, you would not remove one 16 inch bass to use another 16
inch bass for the purpose of who caught how many fish at the end of the day. The
sheets work the same way. With a regular Tournament, the fish are put in
the boats live wells and culled as bigger fish are caught during the day.
Things we track at the "Weigh-in":
·
Number of keeper fish each Youth member ends up with at the end.
o
They get a point for each fish in the sack at the end of the day, a total of 4
points between them gets added to their Place Points for scoring purposes.
·
Big Fish for the day
o
They get a point per boat in the tournament as an extra award, for the big fish
of the day, only 1 Big Fish is awarded for the day, it can be either a LM or SM.
For example, 8 boats in the tournament someone gets 8 points for the big fish of
the day. This gets added to their place points for scoring purposes.
·
Total Team Weight for each boat.
o
The Total for the 3 anglers, up to 5 fish. We use the total weight
at the end of the day to determine who won. The weights are shown on the
worksheets.
The Junior Anglers have all been told to take care of their boaters with Gas
money etc. A minimum of $25 per youth member is required to be offered to the
boaters for a St Clair tournament, for inland lake tournaments we require a $20
Minimum. The money helps off set some of the cost the boaters incur
getting the boats to the lake a and gas money to run the boats while fishing.
This is not optional. They have been told to CALL their Boaters to arrange rides
(if needed) or what they plan on doing for rides and where they will be meeting
the boaters. That call is the Youth member’s responsibility. We do encourage
the youth members to car pool if possible, they may call one of the other
boaters that lives close to them to arrange a ride.
We encourage the Youth members to do the tally at the end of the day for
their boat and then hand in their worksheets to their Tournament Director at the
ramp.
We normally meet for breakfast before the tournament if you are interested. It
is optional. We will meet at a
restaurant close by the lake in the morning.
Blast off time is usually scheduled for around 7 am, but if
everyone is there earlier we will go ahead and blast off.