I’ve never stated that anyone at all needs or ought to seek my approval.
Tournaments (and their accompanying week-worth of pre-fishing) make fishing less fun for the rest of the boating/fishing public. It’s not the traffic, it’s the attitude. Tournament fisher-people are in their own somewhat organized echo-chamber. I’m far from the only person who despises the bulk of what tournaments bring to fishing (hunting too for that matter), but, the non-tournament anglers don’t have an organization to speak for them, in fact, that would run counter to what the enjoy about fishing to begin with.
Ugly Dogs, I’ve given away more fishing gear/tackle than most folks own. I’ve given away my spare spark plugs when someone needed them more than me. I’ve cleaned fish for folks who didn’t know how and were getting essentially nothing from the few fish they had. I fed-ex’s a map with spots marked to a couple of guardsmen I went to school with when I received a PM asking for some general info. I’ve never had the opportunity to pull a boat off of a bar or back to the ramp, but I would.
Just for the record, while we may disagree vehemently about tournaments, AaronJ also know he could call/text me with just about any want/need and I’d drop pretty much everything to get it done. I once even bought a bunch of bait for ‘Sconi tournament fishermen who were staying with him. That doesn’t diminish the fact that I don’t enjoy running through the middle of a glorified boat race nor dealing with any of the tournament day boat ramp goatfuckery.
