Thanks for the report.  I live vicariously through you until I get to fish again.

@Swamp Girl Did you ever get around to conducting your open vs closed mouth experiment? 

3 minutes ago, JHoss said:

@Swamp Girl Did you ever get around to conducting your open vs closed mouth experiment? 

 

I did. I'll PM you.

41 minutes ago, JHoss said:

@Swamp Girl Did you ever get around to conducting your open vs closed mouth experiment? 

 

37 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I did. I'll PM you.

I had the same questions about length between measuring styles after reading through this thread, so I measured several of my bass from yesterday’s report (while out fishing) with mouth open/lip touching and again with mouth closed/nose touching.

 

To preface, having fished bass tournaments since I was a teenager, the official measuring technique was always mouth closed, nose bumped against board on a Golden Rule. I didn’t even know open mouth measuring was a thing until researching it a bit after this thread. 
 

Anyway, after measuring several both ways, the ‘mouth closed/nose bumped’ method was pretty consistently about 1/4” less than measuring ‘open mouth/lip touching’ across a range of bass to 17.5” long - closer than I expected. I had previously compared one other time to a vertical hold using a cloth tape measure for bank angling convenience on bass up to 22.5” long and similarly saw a 1/4”-1/2” difference (longer) compared to a closed mouth on a flat surface measurement. 
 

YMMV - but would be curious what you came up with when comparing @Swamp Girl if you care to message me. Thx

I'm sure there's variance from fish to fish- not all are built the same. Most of the kayak tournaments do a 1" deduction for an open mouth. 

 

They do a length based Speckled Trout tournament locally every fall, but because the organizers lack experience in CPR formats, there's no rule about a closed mouth. In fact, they can have boca grips or a lure in the fishes mouth while its on the board. I've seen a few cases of someone losing the event or placing a spot lower because they measured with an closed mouth and someone else measured with an open mouth. 

 

30 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

To preface, having fished bass tournaments since I was a teenager, the official measuring technique was always mouth closed, nose bumped against board on a Golden Rule. I didn’t even know open mouth measuring was a thing until researching it a bit after this thread. 

That's the standard with measuring most fish for harvest size limits too, so that's how I've always done it. 

That’s what I was thinking, if you don’t close the mouth when harvesting mister green jeans might get ya in the parking lot if you’ve got a close one 

Great bag and nice looking bass.