Your Average 5 Fish Bag

[Team9nine]

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.

 

[Woody B]

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.   

[Team9nine]

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.

[Pat Brown]

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.  🥹🥹🥹

[Logan S]

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.  

[TnRiver46]

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