Yuma Bassmasters - Probably Only of Local Interest

Yuma Bassmasters has a unique format. It is a pro/am draw. Boaters compete with boaters for points and non-boaters compete with non-boaters for points.

For an individual tournament the boater and non-boater are paired up and fish as a team.

I thought it was really cool. It gave a new person a real opportunity to meet with and fish with different people every month. Its a great opportunity to learn and explore new waters.

It may all change. It has been proposed to make Yuma Bassmasters a stright team format like Desert Bass and ABA and WON Bass.

If you are a member or thinking of becoming a member you should come to the December meeting. That is when it will be decided.

Personally I am against the change, and I will vote against it. For or against you should show up and you should make your vote count.

Personally I would never have started fishing tournaments and I probably wouldn't own a bass boat if it wasn't for the current boat/noboat format. I really enjoy fishing tournaments and I have met some really great people not the least of which is my team partner Kwame Kuanda (Hammer) becasue of tournament fishing. A lot of them I never would have met if I hadn't started out last year fishing Yuma Bassmasters as a nonboater. I admit there a few people who might not think thats any big loss, but I believe you have to look to the future if you want to continue to have a good group of anglers to compete against. I take my kids fishing, but thats only two people.

Yuma Bassmasters has something that is really cool. I appreciate everything I have gained because of it, and I hate to see it go. I am sure there have to be other options that can help reduce the friction and still offer teh opportunites. I promised myself I would fish one full season as a nonboater (this season in which I finished third) and then I was going to fish it as a boater. I was looking forward to fishing with more different guys and maybe helping a newbie or two get into it. If this change comes about I have no particular incentive to fish the series. Its just another team series. I'm sure I'ld have no problem finding a partner for it, but if I wanted to fish more team torunaments I'ld hit up Hammer to fish some other ABA regions with me or maybe go fish some WON Bass Pro tournaments.

There are some options that would help. Fish different water. Basically we have two choices. Fish the river above Imperial Dam or fish Mittry Lake. The river is a huge fishery with many lakes, backwaters, and huge sections of bank that all produce fish. It also draws attention and has some decent money won in various club team, semi pro team, and federation tournaments. There are no serious tournaments on Mittry Lake so no matter what there wouldn't be any real money causing conflict if we fished there. Its not a huge lake, but it can easily handle a 30 or 35 boat tournament once a month. Going back on the river some guys are afraid to show each other anything. Another option is to allow non-boaters to fish as a boater for a tournament if there are not enough boaters to get everybody off the bank. Thats was brought up and voted on last year and voted down. Unfortunately there were almost no nonboaters at that meeting. I am sure there have to be other things that can be done, and rebuilding might no be as fast as just changing formats, but the existing format does something idealistic for fishing as a whole.

I'm sure I rambled, and I probably typed something stupid above, but I'm just going to hit send without rereading any of it.