Weigh in procedures for UBCS

Jared LeBlue · January 22, 2016, 12:13:56 PM

Ok this where we will hash out the weigh in Procedures for the UBCS.

Let me start by letting everyone in on some background. The way we have done our weigh ins in the past have caused some concern amongst some anglers. I have often thought that we may need to change things but no one was really saying anything at the tournament so I left it alone. Well last year a few comments were made and it got me to worry a little bit. The one thing I want to make sure of is that Ultimate Bass does not take a negative hit on fish handling so I talked to Mike about it several months back and we kicked around some ideas. I then discussed it with others and there were concerns on both sides. So here we are trying to make this work as best we can. Any ideas are welcome. Please keep civil and keep the goal in mind that we are trying to keep a positive vibe on things.

Here is what we are dealing with: We weigh in fish for teams and then for the clubs. Each team can bring in 5 fish. Once all teams have weighed the clubs get together and take the best 10 fish from the teams in their club and weigh them for the club weight. The process happens again on day 2.
The problem we have is we are handling the fish way to much and the end process is we have a bunch of dead fish.

One idea was to get tubs and pumps and what ever catch saver there is to keep the fish in while standing and waiting. It's a good idea but some questions are: who is going to fill the tub, who is going to provide the catch saver chemical, and does everyone have a mesh bag to put their fish in to dunk in the tubs. Another thing I see a s still being a problem is we are still taking the fish out of the livewell, putting them in a holding tank, taking them out and weighing them, then going back to the holding tank, then taking them out putting them on a cull bar, placing them back in a bag, and the removing them from the water again to weigh them one last time.

Even though that is better than what we have done I think with all the handling we still have to do we are going to have some floating fish.

Guys most of you know me and know that I am not a catch and release disciple but when you have a tournament and you throwing fish back in the water and there are a bunch of floating fish that is just not good.
If we are going to continue with the same type weigh ins then we need to just keep the fish. I don't care how we do it but that would be a whole lot better than throwing them back and having them float up minutes later.

I am up for any ideas that will help so start the brain storming.

Fishingfun86 · January 22, 2016, 12:34:31 PM

This is an awesome initiative and I completely agree that I love eating fish but there is nothing worse than seeing an 8+ floating after a weigh in. One of the Ideas I thought about was taking the top two teams weights for each team and counting that towards the total club weight per day. I understand that this could possibly cause the weights not to be as high. Or To make it a true team tournament Each partner pair could weigh their biggest fish at weigh in and then the biggest 10 fish weighed will be added together for the total team weight for the day. This would still allow each team to weigh individually for the day and keep the fish from being handled to much.

Jared LeBlue · January 22, 2016, 01:19:04 PM

Quote from: Fishingfun86 on January 22, 2016, 12:34:31 PM
This is an awesome initiative and I completely agree that I love eating fish but there is nothing worse than seeing an 8+ floating after a weigh in. One of the Ideas I thought about was taking the top two teams weights for each team and counting that towards the total club weight per day. I understand that this could possibly cause the weights not to be as high. Or To make it a true team tournament Each partner pair could weigh their biggest fish at weigh in and then the biggest 10 fish weighed will be added together for the total team weight for the day. This would still allow each team to weigh individually for the day and keep the fish from being handled to much.

We kind of kicked something to that nature around. Basically weigh the best two fish from every team and then take the best 10 from that. The opposition to that is if someone comes in with 5 really good fish 3 of those wouldn't count. The same would hold true to what you are saying. If we took the top 2 team weights and someone else had a 6 or 7 lber and wasn't in that top 2 teams then that club would not have that seven lber for it's weight. I not disagreeing with either idea, I'm just giving you what the opposition would be.

Jared LeBlue · January 22, 2016, 01:20:25 PM

Yall keep them coming. We may be able to combine some of these ideas to make something work.

Ron Fogelson · January 22, 2016, 01:33:20 PM

Might be easiest to have a 2nd person collecting individual weights as team members go through the line.

So I'd bring my bass to the scales,,, Jared and Suzie weigh my fish but only weigh them one at a time no bag. Once the weight is called out another member writes down Ron Fogelson 1 - 2.5lbs that fish is removed from the scale and put in a bag, I hand my next fish over Jared & Suzie weigh it and the recorder writes down 2 - 2.6 that fish is removed and added to the bag, I turn in my 3rd same as above recorder writes down 3 - 5.0 fish is put in the bag and I do the same with my 4th, recorder writes down 4 - 1.12 it's then put in the bag and I had over the 5th and final fish same as above recorder writes 5- 12.25 WOOHOO that one is added to the bag and then the whole bag is weighed for my total weight. The total weight is added to the score board and the recorder hands me my weigh sheet and Jared pours my fish back in my weigh bag and I take it to release them.

Now if folks are concerned with me walking off with the weigh sheet that can stay up at the scales and in that case we should have 1 tctc member and one lock jaw member recording the weights and keeping the sheets.

Once everyone is finished on member from each club takes all the weigh sheets to the other team. So lock jaw would bring tctc sheets over to us and we together would pick our best 10 weights and add them up while lock jaw watches over us and the same thing for Lock Jaw, a tctc recorder would bring them their sheets and watch over them while they pick the best 10 and we would post our top 10 bass weights on the board. Fish are handled much faster and not kept in our small weigh bags for near as long before being returned to the lake.

Zuk · January 22, 2016, 01:37:38 PM

I do agree something needs to be done! I'd say weigh everyones big bass and then take the top ten bigest fish from each club. That way every team on each club contributes to their clubs weight instead of one team carrying the whole clubs weight.

bassadict69 · January 22, 2016, 02:30:36 PM

When I read the opening post to this thread, I was kind of thinking along Rons way of thinking. Weigh each individual fish with a member of the opposite team writing the weights of each fish. Both teams "secretary" so to speak would be watching the other write the weights down as they are weighed.

As each two person teams fish are weighed, they are immediately released. At the end of the weighing, each team gets their list of individual fish weights to put together their top 10.

If need be, one day weigh TCTC first so only their fish are out of the livewells, then Lockjaw pulls theirs and weighs, then the next day vice versa.

This should keep fish from being out of the water no longer than during a regular club tourney.

Jared LeBlue · January 22, 2016, 02:38:04 PM

Fogy, thats a good idea but we still going to face few things. Obviously it will take longer at the scales to do that so people standing in line will be holding fish a weigh bag longer which isn't that good unless of course we had the tubs and the mesh bags. Then we bring up the problems with that again. It would however cut down on the handling of the fish so I think it is a possibility.

Zuk, I like the idea and it does bring up the point that each team participates in the weight instead of one or two teams carrying the club and that would be the fastest and least amount of handling of the fish. Down side is you still going to have the argument that we should have won or they should have won because not all the fish were accounted for. I do think that this would add a different element to the tournament however because it basically forces the members in clubs to work together so everyone catches fish.

Keep um coming.

Mike Cork · January 22, 2016, 06:05:11 PM

I'm easy so let me through out controversy for both ideas so far...

We could do Ron's idea but drop to a three fish limit. This would make it a lot faster at the scales. Anglers keep their fish in the livewell until called. With a manager, the line could be only two anglers deep. It would still take longer to do the weigh in, but over a two day even I would still think 6 fish would represent a winner in the individual side very well and typically a singe team isn't going to contribute more than three fish. If they had that great of a day then good on them, brag about it.

As far as taking everyone's big fish, I like it too. Represents the whole club, the good the bad and the ugly all have to play. Only "weigh" I see it being unjust to a team... we've had events where a club didn't have 10 teams, and tournaments where the club didn't have ten teams weigh.

Jared LeBlue · January 22, 2016, 06:58:51 PM

Good stuff Mike. I think we heading in the right direction

Jared LeBlue · January 23, 2016, 12:07:40 PM

So far with the ideas, which have all been helpful, I think we may have come up with something.

This will take a little initiative from both clubs but would speed up the weigh in and would reduce the handling of fish without really changing a whole lot.

First of all everyone will need to know what they have so that would require weighing them on the water or using a culling beam or just doing your best guess. When you come in a captain from your club will ask you have. It will be the captains responsibility to keep track. Each team will still weigh in their best 5 fish which should be all they have in their livewell per our culling rule.

Instead of 10 fish per club we will reduce it to 6 or 7. I think lower the better because again the less we have to re handle the better. The Club captain will tell the weigh master if a fish or two, or three, or whatever from that team needs to be weigh for the club weight. So for example if I had 5 fish but only one of them would be going to the club weight then the team captain would tell the weigh master to weigh that fish for the club weight. While he is weighing that fish the others can be released. Once that fish is weighed and recorded it will be released. At the end of the weigh in we will add the 6 or 7 fish weights for each club and that will be their club weight.

Basically all we are doing is reducing the number of club weighed fish and doing the culling or determination of which fish is to be weighed for the club before hand, actually even before they are taken from the livewell.

So a run down would look like this. Everyone shows up and checks in. Club captains will get with their teams to find out what 6 or 7 ( or whatever number ) fish will be used for the club weight. The goal here is not to be weighing and culling at the boats but rather each boat already have that information available for the club captain. So when the club captain walks up you should be able to tell him what each of your fish weigh. He logs that and goes to the next boat. He will then know which 6 fish need to be weighed individually for the club weight. Club captains can stand with weigh master and as teams come up to weigh he will inform weigh master that a certain fish or multiple fish from that team needs to be weighed for club weight. The weigh master will weigh the teams fish for the team division then will take the fish that is requested to be weigh for club weight and weigh them individually. The weight will be written down and on to the next team. At the end of weigh in we will add the weights from each club. This should get the fish back in the water quickly and reduce the number of fish that have to be handled twice. It will also make it better for the fish that are handled twice because it is done quickly and you don't have to put them back in a bag and wait for 20 minutes to take them back out, cull, and then weigh.

I think this will work. Please feel free to add to this or if you see some problems with it tell me what they are so that way we can keep working on it.

BassSacker · January 23, 2016, 03:15:27 PM

you could setup flighting so there is not such a long line where some fish are in the bags for to long a time. 15 minute increments should help.

Jared LeBlue · January 23, 2016, 03:45:46 PM

Yeah we will add that to it. We can call two or three teams up at a time and when the last odmthat group is weigh bet the next in line.

Ron Fogelson · January 23, 2016, 07:51:28 PM

There are scales in both clubs that are way off of the tournament scale,,, taking the word of who has the biggest 6/7 fish based on what they weighed on the water and then having them weighed on the tournament scale as a team is risky if we have a close race.

IMHO if we aren't going to weigh all the fish on the tournament scales one at a time then we need tubs or a release trailer.

I was also thinking last night if we do weigh the fish one at a time there is no reason to reweigh them when the weights can just be added up mean while only bring one or two teams to the scale at a time. So once the very 1st team starts to weigh call for the next team everyone else leaves their fish in the live well.

It's the keeping fish and recalling and moving from bag to bag that is the hardest,,,, cutting gthat out completely is key IMHO to reduce the stress and mortality.

Nutoy · January 24, 2016, 09:40:07 AM

Guys/Gals, I want to personally say "Thank You" for taking the initiative to help reduce the mortality at your weigh ins.

What I've seen at a lot of weigh ins is there are two main reasons that cause high mortalities. High water temps, and lack of oxygenated water in the weigh in bag, with the latter being the main culprit.
Once the fish are placed in a weigh in bag, they immediately start to deplete the oxygen in the water. Without a way to resupply oxygenated water, they only have minutes before irreversible effects occur.
Warmer water contains less dissolved oxygen than cooler water. Cooler water also slows the fishes metabolism, causing less demand on oxygen.

Just a few thoughts, and once again Thanks.

Jared LeBlue · January 24, 2016, 09:52:39 AM

The only problem I see with weighing every fish is the weigh in is going to take a long time. Thats going to be a lot of fish to weigh one at a time. Then we have turn around add all that. Heck we messed up one year on just adding a few things.

If the worry is about scales being off then you can take a good scale from one of the teams and weigh the qustionable close fish or even better use a culling beam. That is same thing we were doing in the past except we we doing it after they all were in bags for 20 minutes or more.

If we go down on the number from 10 to 6 then its going to be a lot easierto pick those fish and you pretty much not going to have to many in that weight class thats going to have to hit the culling beam.

Now we go to 7 which would probably sit better with more people and I think we would still be ok.

Ron Fogelson · January 24, 2016, 01:11:39 PM

Any change is going to be better glad we are all working on it

BassBUFF · January 24, 2016, 02:52:11 PM

Quote from: Ron Fogelson on January 23, 2016, 07:51:28 PM
There are scales in both clubs that are way off of the tournament scale,,, taking the word of who has the biggest 6/7 fish based on what they weighed on the water and then having them weighed on the tournament scale as a team is risky if we have a close race.

IMHO if we aren't going to weigh all the fish on the tournament scales one at a time then we need tubs or a release trailer.

I was also thinking last night if we do weigh the fish one at a time there is no reason to reweigh them when the weights can just be added up mean while only bring one or two teams to the scale at a time. So once the very 1st team starts to weigh call for the next team everyone else leaves their fish in the live well.

It's the keeping fish and recalling and moving from bag to bag that is the hardest,,,, cutting gthat out completely is key IMHO to reduce the stress and mortality.

I'm with Ron on the time fish are this one, it's the best way to minimize the handling of the fish. If we weigh-in by boat #s then everyone keeps them in the live-well until called. We can run 2 scales and the opposite team captain oversees the other weigh-in and records the weights. It should go pretty quick this way.

Otherwise, we need to invest in some tubs and aerators!!

Jared LeBlue · January 24, 2016, 07:33:57 PM

Calling up a couple of teams at a time is a great idea and I think everyone agrees wih that.

Russ199A · January 24, 2016, 08:28:33 PM

I like keeping the numbers the same, 5 fish per team and 10 fish per club. I also like the idea of weighing each fish individually, recording the weight and immediately releasing the fish. Lastly I believe weigh-in should be done by numbers. (keep your fish in the live well until called)
In reality, weigh-in won't take any longer since there's no need for sorting and reweighing the best 10 fish.

Nutoy · January 25, 2016, 09:00:31 AM

I know I don't have a dog in this hunt but here's a suggestion on weighing each fish.

Chances are a 14"-15"er is not going to make it into the 10 fish club sack. If it does you're probably SOL anyways.

Weigh each teams big ones, however many that might be, then throw all the small ones together and weigh them.

The weigh tickets would look like this:

Mike Cork/Laurie Cork
Fish #1: 8.52
Fish #2: 6.75
Fish #3/#4/#5: 8.55
----------------------------
TOTAL: 23.82
________________________

Jared LeBlue/Billy NoBass
Fish#1: 6.55
Fish#2/#3/#4/#5: 9.55
-----------------------------
TOTAL: 16.10
_____________________

Jared LeBlue · January 25, 2016, 01:14:13 PM

We can still do the 10 per club. I just trying to keep thing simple and flowing. If we do weigh each fish I am telling you it is going to take some time. We average around 65 fish per day to weigh in. That means you pull a fish out the bag weigh it, record it, put it in another bag, then on with process until you finish with that team. You can then take the second bag which should have all that teams fish in it and go put them back in the water. As for fish care that will work fine but it will take a long time to weigh that many fish individually.

Zuk · January 25, 2016, 02:47:55 PM

Ok guys, just an example!

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Mike Cork · January 25, 2016, 05:35:43 PM

On Nutoy's thoughts and along my thought process. Most teams are not going to contribute more than a fish or two three at most. I think a club representative could work the weigh in line of their club and pick the best 6 or 7 fish to be weighed individually.

Everyone knows it's those last 3 fish that cause the culling to a team bag to take so long. Every year there are 5-6 fish that are "for sure" and we weigh and re-weigh the 2.75 pounders looking for a tenth of an ounce.

If we drop the team number to 6-7 I think a club could pick those out pretty easy while fish are still in the livewells. And if it get close at the last couple thing a club member (using the same hand held) finds the last one or two.

Food for thinking...

Jared LeBlue · January 25, 2016, 06:56:14 PM

Yeah Mike that was my point. If people are having a heart ache about dropping down on the numbers I think we can still work it out with 10 it will just be a few that needs to hit the balance beam. Another thing that will help is ice. If eveyone can put a little ice in their livewell while waiting it will help tne fish. Again Im not trying to make this difficult just trying to do what we can with the least amount of disturbance to the weigh in.
Just keep in mind that eveyone involved in this tournament is fishing the tournament so things like tubs brings up the questions as to who is bring them, filling them, providing the pumps and the catch saver. Also remeber on Sunday when everyone is ready to go someone has to drain the tubs and take care of loading them. Another thing with tubs is you have to have mesh bags. While tubs would be awesome and would solve alot of the mortality problems we would have to address the problems above.

Ithink the two ideas we have working is to have club aptains check with everyone before weigh in and pick the fish from the teams that will be weighed for club results or we weigh every fish individually.

So with that give the pros and cons to each.