Quote:
Originally Posted by nightfighter
From the OTW rules;
All entrants must register in either the BOAT, SHORE or YOUTH division when signing up for the tournament. For the duration of the tournament, an entrant can only weigh in fish for the division in which he/she is registered.
I think this precludes an angler from participating in both divisions...
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Ross, I realize that those are the present rules. I was proposing letting people enter both if they set up separate shore and boat divisions. Trying to tweak a "handicap" to balance the scale is just an exercise in futility, IMO. The perfect tournament hasn't been invented yet. You'll always be able to look at any set of rules and say, "I think that XXXX would be better". Except that OTW is tinkering with it trying to get that elusive "perfection". This is the third year of OTW and the third year they've had entirely different rules. Most people feel that separate boat and shore divisions would have been the right way to go from the start. That would eliminate trying to calculate what a fair handicap for shorebound anglers would be. Even though sb-com benefitted from it, saying that a shore caught fish is worth 30% more weight than a boat fish is ridiculous.
Up until 1984, the MV Derby didn't have boat and shore divisions for bass, and if you look at the history, shore guys won as often, if not more often, than boaters. Guys like #^&#^&#^&#^& Hathaway, Ralph Grant, Stevie Morris, and the Mad Russian, DeSomov, were surfcasters.