Many years ago Ray Scott, Bob Cobb and I saw the horsepower race coming and we took steps to slow it down by installing a 150hp limit in BASS tournaments. We did it before the first 150hp outboards were on the market – the largest at that time were 135hp – but we knew there were plans for 18-foot boats that would carry a 150hp rating in the works so we decided to halt the horsepower race at 150hp.

Tournament anglers are copycats – whatever one has the others think they must have too. Any new product soon becomes the thing everyone needs to compete. Years ago a new product called "Doodle Oil" was the thing. You added it to your lures and everyone was using it. Ray asked an angler weighing in, "Does Doodle Oil really work?" He replied, "I don't know, but I can't afford to not use it."



Changing the horsepower rules will not work: If BASS does it FLW will not, if FLW does it BASS will not. The sport has no leader and no future until it wises up like the ball sports did after butting heads for many years and finally creating a commission board to run those sports. The owners and players cannot run major sports events – they'll not do anything to help their competition. That's just the way competition works, so they created a commission board whose job is to run and regulate the sport for the benefit of the sport – everyone plays by the same set of rules. Until that happens in bass tournament angling, it'll struggle.

Now that the biggest fish in the pond is floating belly up, gasping for breath, it won't be long before we see others pop up. BASS cut its schedule and payout, now many anglers are standing on the bank watching their equipment rust and payments build up. The tackle industry's trying to see who can charge the most for equipment. Less than a quarter of the Elite anglers have won back their entry-fee money and travel cost, and that will not change soon as half the owners are only interested in a TV rating, and the other half's trying to sell boats.

The "Big O" can't help – he has his plate full with the auto industry. There's no stimulus money earmarked for a "Bass Bail-Out" and many of the players are fighting each other. The professional bass-fishing sport better start looking at a commission board to manage, control, regulate and lobby for this sport.

Bass anglers don't need BASS or FLW to conduct bass tournaments. They can fish hundreds any weekend. But FLW and BASS need anglers to fish their events and work for free to produce TV shows and purchase boats and tackle.
Soon the anglers will stop buying overpriced tackle and remember that bass will bite cheap lures. And that the rules state you can only fish one rod and reel at a time and there has never been a bass weighed in that was caught while the boat was on plane. This will wake up the tackle industry and stop that rat race.

The horsepower race can be controlled by one simple rule change in how the tournaments are scored. Today's events are scored by only counting the five largest bass you catch in a tournament day. This encourages anglers to run around looking for just five large bites, burning gas and using horsepower. If the scoring was based on the number of bass you can locate and catch during a tournament day, then this would put fishing back in the tournaments. It would create a new need for smaller boats, motors, line, lures and tackle and require more fishing time and less running time. Remember they're copycats, and if the others are fishing, they can't afford not to slow down and compete.

It's not that complicated to score a bass tournament by the numbers of bass caught. I'll be happy to show any tournament organizer who's interested how it works.

We hope that someone at BASS and FLW and the fishing industry is beginning to worry about where the sport is heading and decides to sit down and discuss it.

January 1968, Ray Scott attended a meeting with anglers in Chattanooga, Tenn. That meeting started this sport. I arranged that meeting and will be happy to help arrange a meeting to save it if someone is interested and it's held in Chattanooga, Tenn. where it all started.

Harold Sharp was the first tournament director Ray Scott hired. Sharp left BASS long ago, but as all readers of BassFan FeedBack know, he still cares passionately about the sport.