Any chance this club will ever get fired back up again?
Any chance this club will ever get fired back up again?
I would be interested if it did. I fished a few of these tournaments a few years ago and it was a lot of fun.
Funny this tread has popped up. My wife asked the same thing yesterday when we were moving some stuff in the closet and ran across all the weigh-in equipment. I'd really like to resume it if we could manage to get enough people to participate since it really makes no sense to have a tournament with only two or three boaters.
With that being said, what would you guys think about starting back up next month?
I would definately be game!
Sounds good to me also.
I'd be interested as well. That makes about 6 of us now. Enough to get things started
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Definitely need to do the cook out tournament again
I have considered attending several times in the past, but I never made it happen. If you guys decide to start them back again, it might be a good idea to post it in the general forum as well. I know there are a lot of Alabama guys on this site that may not ever visit this forum.
I'm in !!
To me there are two main questions that need to be discussed:
1. How many people that want to start the club back are willing to fish more than their favorite lake? That was the main downfall before. If you went to Pickwick, you would have 3 or 4 boats. If you went to Weiss, you would have a different 3 or 4 boats. To make this work, we need a pool of lakes that all members are willing to travel to.
2. The other problem was, this was everyone's fallback club. Most fished their "primary club" first and only fished with us when they didn't have a "real tournament" or need to practice for a "real tournament".
If people won't travel and won't make this their primary club, it won't work IMO. Harry and I have fished this club (along with Avery) as our primary club for about 15 years. It was never about "winning", but about getting to know a great group of guys. I loved fishing the North AL club. But it will take more than 4 or 5 interested people to make it work. Avery and Harry, please feel free to add your 2 cents. Avery was the best club leader we could have asked for, so I don't really know what happened. But it was a struggle the last couple of years to get more that 3 or 4 boats, even at Guntersville. I'm not trying to toss cold water on the idea, I just want to get the main issues on the table to see if others think we can overcome them before we start it back up again.
I agree with the above statement to post the idea in the general forum to see if more people are interested. Avery, what are your thoughts?
Very well put, Alan. And I agree that commitment by the members is imperative if this is going to work at all. I really think the biggest problem in the past is that the monthly NoAl tournament was thought of as a "filler" to be fished only if it didn't interfere with their "primary club" tournaments or if someone was looking for a quick couple of bucks while they were pre fishing for their next club tournament. Very frustrating, indeed.........Originally Posted by CrankinStein
I was talking to David Scogin about this while we were fishing today and he brought up the idea of an "end of year" pre-paid tournament, financed by an additional $5.00 per boat per tournament with the understanding that you must fish "X" number of tournaments to qualify. I don't know if this would work at all but it might be worth a try.
Avery,
Is there a way to "schedule" these around the BFL/ABA/ABTs say like a floating weekend on those months where there is a "bigger" tournament? I'd love to fish more of these, it just always seemed that the 3rd Saturday was always on a BFL or ABA day. I know February-May and September/October is generally the "bigger" tournament months, so coulda date during those months be decided upon in a vote? That may get more participation IMHO.
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Great ideas guys. The only issue I would have is I work swing shift, but could probably work something out with the guys I work with to make most of them. I do not belong to any other club, nor do I fish any of the bigger tournaments. I really enjoyed the fellowship the few I got to fish a few years ago. My daughter took up Alot of my off time with travel softball. But now the she has moved on to college, I got a little more free time to kill. As long as yall do not have a problem with me fishing out of a flatbottom, you can count me in.
I would be interested in it as well.
I agree with the above posts. I think it would be a better turn out if we made an end of the year classic and you had to fish so many tournaments to make it.
When will a decision be made and when would the first one be tentatively? ?
Unfortunately, we've been down that road before with not-so-good results. We used to nominate and vote for a weekend to fish and, once that was established, nominate and vote on a particular lake and take off location.
It seemed that no matter what weekend was voted on, there was ALWAYS some other "bigger" tournament going on at the same time. Sometimes guys would vote on a lake they already had a tournament scheduled on with their other club and enter both tournaments. We don't really have a problem with guys that want to do that as long as they clear it with both tournament directors and abide by the more stringent rule of both clubs. I know we ran into a problem with this on at least two occasions. Once was when we fished Pickwick and the other club had a minimum 15" rule in place since they were able to fish the ENTIRE lake (including Tennessee and Mississippi water) and we had a 12" limit for largemouth and spotted bass at that time since we were limited to fishing water within the state of Alabama (Oh, by the way, the length rules have since been changed to 15" for all bass species.) There was a big brouhaha because they didn't have a limit at their primary club and had two fish less than 15" in their live well, which disqualified them from weighing in their "primary" tournament. The other problem we ran into was early on prior to the NoAl/SoAl split when Winn Hammond was still the TD and the other (MUCH larger) club had a rule in place where the fish were technically the "property" of that club's TD once they were presented at the scales. They drew an earlier weigh in time at their other tournament so they had to surrender their fish and had nothing to weigh in at ours.
The other problem that we ran into were guys, predominately those that would only fish their home lake, that would make their nomination for the week and lake preceding their "primary" tournament so they could make a little money so, in effect, we usually ended up financing their pre-fishing trip.
We also used to scour all the online sites listing tournament details so we could find to try to avoid specific weekends and/or tournament launch sites but it didn't seem to help very much, primarily because apparently there's no such thing as an "all inclusive" web site for upcoming tournament details.
The reason the third weekend of the month was chosen is because the SoAl guys have theirs on the first Saturday of the month and a few guys expressed a desire to at least have an opportunity to fish both of them occasionally. Personally, it doesn't make a great deal of difference to me but I'd rather see it the same weekend of the month if possible.
I have no idea at this point since we're still in the planning stage. With enough participants, though, I'd just as soon move on it fairly quickly - perhaps as soon as the 3rd Saturday in February if we still decide to stick to that specific weekend.
Ok thanks for the info. Definitely interested if you get this back going.
I'm in
