32 minutes ago, Catt said:

@Team9nine That's one out of 7 tournaments annually & there's records for 10 yrs.

 

Ya might find a little different results. 🤔 

 

It's the one you chose to link  

 

...but I'd bet the pattern holds true overall - some events better, some worse.

 

EDIT: I went back and pulled the data for the past 10 years at your suggestion, only for Toledo Bend to keep things comparable, and I'd argue you can see a declining pattern in the big bass catches over that time period. A lot more 8's and 9's among the Top-5 bass overall, just 3 bass over 10 out of the past 5 years vs. 11 over the previous 5 years, and only 1 11/12 pound fish the past 5 years vs. 4 the previous 5 years. You also never saw an 8 pound fish make the Top-5 for the first 4 years shown (2014-2017). Now they make up over half the Top-5 catches.

 

I don't think tournaments and really big bass.....go together.   I suppose it depends somewhat on the waters fished, but the tournament anglers I know around here mostly start out the day trying to catch 5 keepers.  (14" here)  Then, after getting a limit they start searching for, targeting bigger bass.   

 

I'm not going to fish 8 hours straight so I usually start out targeting bigger Bass.   

2 minutes ago, Woody B said:

I don't think tournaments and really big bass.....go together.   I suppose it depends somewhat on the waters fished, but the tournament anglers I know around here mostly start out the day trying to catch 5 keepers.  (14" here)  Then, after getting a limit they start searching for, targeting bigger bass.   

 

I'm not going to fish 8 hours straight so I usually start out targeting bigger Bass.   

That’s the nice thing about the Sealy Big Bass data shown above - it’s a big bass only tourney. Five fish or total weights mean nothing. Hourly winners as well as overall winners. 3 days - over 3,000 people fishing. Catch the biggest bass you can catch in the lake. It’s a pretty good representation of what’s swimming in the lake, both in size and numbers.

When I'm lucky enough to catch a fish or two it's usually a dink and occasionally I catch a bunch of fish and occasionally more still I catch a big fish or two so getting a 5 fish limit is not a regular enough thing during my sparse outings to my lil pressured public spots to even have a gauge of the average.  All the respect to folks who catch 5 or more fish every time they go fishing but that just ain't in the cards around here and I tend to smile from ear to ear if I get to see one wake on my bait or even if I feel a thump or catch a single dink during a two hour bank fishing session.

 

I have had some days on the boat during my strong seasons where I'll catch 5 + good fish and I'm fiercely proud of those days however difficult it is to consistently do that for me.

 

I catch *enough* bigger fish every year to make the sting of not getting limits every trip bearable.  🥹🥹🥹

What the tournament results provide is data on a large scale that is pretty reliable...If you compile it year after year you can keep a pretty good eye on the fishery and its trends.

 

I think it's a lot more useful than the usually 2x per year DNR shock surveys.  

Or the creel surveys. Ask a bunch of liars what happened out there and extrapolate that into an equation and call it “data” 😂 

Here in West Virginia i would say the average angler could catch a 8 lbs 5 bass limit on a average day on a lot of bodies of water. A lot of tournaments are won with with 13lbs limit sometimes on certain lakes it might be 18lb but that's not the norm. Although if you go to the New River in southern WV its not uncommon to catch a 6lbs smallmouth but its a dangerous river and hard to fish. 

Here on Roosevelt an average 5 lb sack is about 15 and change. Sacks in the high 20’s to 30+ are becoming a regular thing though. 

3 hours ago, jeffc5268 said:

Here in West Virginia i would say the average angler could catch a 8 lbs 5 bass limit on a average day on a lot of bodies of water. A lot of tournaments are won with with 13lbs limit sometimes on certain lakes it might be 18lb but that's not the norm. Although if you go to the New River in southern WV its not uncommon to catch a 6lbs smallmouth but its a dangerous river and hard to fish. 

I fish all over WV and while there is the occasional 5-6lb Largemouth and even bigger, 8 lb bag would be pretty accurate.

WV lakes are beautiful and I'll keep fishing them.

I don't think in terms of 5-fish limits but I can estimate what they would have been for each trip I made this year, based on what I caught.  If I exclude shorebound and wading trips under 2 hours, the average of my "bags" across all other trips is 7lb, rounding to the nearest pound.  If I include just those trips where I would have had a 5-fish limit (about half), the average is 12lb.   My biggest bag so far this year would have been 17lb.  

Usually between 10-12 pounds. I'm not a good big fish guy but I can catch numbers. lol

8 hours ago, IYAOYAS said:

Usually between 10-12 pounds. I'm not a good big fish guy but I can catch numbers. lol

10-12 lbs would probably be the biggest limit of my life 😂 

Sometimes I am lucky to catch 5 fish. Of the times I do, sometimes it's like 10lbs or less. My best day was around 22lbs.