Bull Shoals ArkansasÂ
The event I had attended happened to be an event I had participated in myself. I have been competitively bass fishing for over ten years now. I currently fish for the UWW bass fishing team here at Whitewater Wisconsin. I am the current vice president of the bass team alongside the president Mitch Vanert. I have been honored to have the opportunity to fish on the UWW bass fishing team through my college years. I was fortunate enough to qualify for nationals during my sophomore year of college. For this specific event I chose to do for my live blog, we fished down in bull shoals Arkansas. This is a three-day event; competitors fish the third day if they qualify the second day of fishing.
Weigh in Process
The way tournament bass fishing works go like this; you have eight hours to fish a given body of water. The fish that are eligible to weigh consist of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, and spotted bass. Typically fish must be over fourteen inches to weigh in. When tournament bass fishing artificial lures are the only bait of choice no live bait allowed. The heaviest bag of a five-fish limit of bass wins the event. For this specific event, it was a five-fish limit of bass over fifteen inches. My partner and I had caught a lot of fish during practice days of this event. We had found a solid smallmouth bass bite that lasted us most of the event. Unfortunately, the weights of the smallmouth bass weren’t enough to cut it to qualify for this tournament. We had competed against around two hundred schools. For the college series events, there are many different ways you can fish and get involved.
Facebook Live
For my live blog, I decided to do a Facebook live to record the action that was taking place for this event. I was able to capture some footage within the last twenty minutes of the event. For my live blog, I was able to explain how the weigh-in process works within competitive bass fishing. I wanted to give a live visual of exactly the process and vision of how competitors walk onto the stage and show off their catch. I was able to do a quick brief from the start explaining what the event was about and where it takes place. I then proceeded to show the college teams walk on stage and record their catch weights for their places. I also incorporated the commentator Hank who announces the final weights once you enter the stage. For the weigh-in process, you have three flights of boats that take off. Depending on the number of boats in each event, flights may vary. For this specific tournament, we were flight three which happened to be the last flight of the day. I also wanted to show the weigh-in station and how much work goes into making one of these events possible. Bethel University had won the event with an 18.5 lb bag of bass the last day.