Opinions on Use of Flogger in Tourneys

[juice780]

With thousands of dollars of electronics is that really necessary?

I don’t think beds shows up on graphs

[kbad]

Yes they do. I have found shell craker beds in as deep as 17 foot of water

[juice780]

Yes they do. I have found shell craker beds in as deep as 17 foot of water

Bass beds

[Walleyeguy456]

Same guy won 2 years in a row. Yes he used a Flogger but I think he is a good stick. Read his report. He got it during practice but said he caught fish, weighed them and marked his GPS. Just another gimic. I have used one. It is fun to look at fish with but doubt it is a game changer.

BTW For all the Ranger Cup non fans. He has won 2 boats in 2 years. Not bad.

[Babe Winkleworm]

Been using them for years here. Sometimes you have to get a new one for each trip.

That's a true friend right there. If it was me..my hands would slip.

[WWDIII]

Three pages and half of us still don't know what a flogger is...!!!!

[Dan21XRS]

Three pages and half of us still don't know what a flogger is...!!!!

Here google is your friend... Dan

http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/LureC...PBFLOGGER.html






https://www.flwfishing.com/tips/2017...in-bathyscope-

[poppy perch]

Wow, what will they think of next? Glad Lake Sam Rayburn & Toledo Bend aren't clear. We just look for fins above the water line in spring..LOL

[JAZII]

The bass fishing on Champlain is no where near what it was prior to 20 years ago. It all went down hill after B.A.S.S. went up there in 97. The fishing a week ago was the worst I have ever encountered up there. Yeah you can get a limit, but not the fun fishing numbers I have been accustomed to over the past three decades.
.

Dude
you must have been fishing history!

the lake is about 3 weeks behind from normal years

post spawn blues for LM in the Ti area.

about 50% smallies spawned in main lake, lots more to come!

[basscatcher89]

Man I remember when these came out and we had all these threads making fun of them. Now we're talking about them as a serious tournament tool lol

[krindgen]

I'm all for guys working their ass off using whatever is legal to win tournaments. If the flogger is legal and gives an advantage, use it.

[JBIGUNS]

There is no official practice for a Costa.

I just finished this event. Yes I bed fished. Yes I used the flogger. You have to. You are bringing a knife to a gunfight if you aren't. The flogger is part of the issue, but not all of it. My take...

I saw people with cameras in the water on poles looking at their feed on their graph (I assume) with two guys in the boat with floggers on either side in the driving seats.

I saw guys laying down running their Ultrex with the remote and their heads stuck in a flogger.

All legal.

The fix to this is to get the catch and release dates adjusted. I'm not sure when they were adopted, but they aren't even close. Fish routinely spawn in big numbers here till early July. There simply shouldn't be any tournaments until after the fourth of July. MLF style are better but there will be guys catching the same smallies during the day. Yes they are that dumb when they are on the beds. Open the season up from April 1 to May 15 and close it again until after July 4th.

Forget the effect on the spawn and the cycle of life of the fish. You won't get any official numbers but the dead fish numbers around these events are mind numbing. Not necessarily to the scales so much, but afterward. There was a tournament in Ti where the water temp is in the low to mid 70s where there were tons of main lake bedding smallies brought from 50 some degree water. I don't know the numbers, but it was ugly.

Floggers and technology are going to be tough to stop. The way to fix the negative impacts on our spawn is to change the catch and release dates here. There is a group of locals starting to organize something to try and adjust them to make some sense. The record numbers of people fishing these events and the dollars they bring are going to be tough to battle though. A post-spawn mid July tournament will be significantly tougher fishing and there won't be as many guys making the trip to grind out 14 pound limits. Over the last two weekends in Plattsburgh alone, there were 148 boats in the BFL and 204 boats fishing two days of Costa with the majority of the field picking beds. That cannot be good for anything but tourist dollars (short term).

Great post Bill, couldn’t agree more. Would love to see some pre spawn tournaments on Champlain and give those fish a rest to do their thing.