[Saltheart]

So a heavy hitter (Someone known to catch lots of big fish every year) can join as unaffiliated , enter fish as an independent to be sure he's got some in there for some prizes , then wait for the season to progress and see how the team totals tally up. Then near the end , when its getting obvious who the winner or at least top 3 will be , he can jump in and join a garanteed winning or high placing team. I'm not saying he did that but the exceptions made to allow moving from unaffiliated to affiliated would allow this.

I've posted the rule twice in purple. Its apparant that people interpret this differently than me. To me it says when you join you decide if you are an independent or a team member. To me that's it , that's what you are for the tournament. Why even have such a rule if you can jump around from unaffiliated to affiliated during the contest? Yes I know the slippery slope was started with exceptions in the past and that those exceptions even involved S-B team people. As I said earlier, if you do something once it doesn't mean you have to keep doing it that way forever.

The integrity of the tournament is bound to adherence to the rules by both the participants and the organizers. Making exceptions or looking for supreme court type loop holes to simple fishing tournament rules casts a shadow over things that some may not care about but that others might.

I joined the tournament the first year simply to be able to go to the party at the end at Harpoon Brewery (I think it was Harpoon?). I got a pin and a golden raffle ticket and Smokey and I had good food and beer at the party. We ran into all the usual hard core guys ( even56456) at the party so it was a good social event like TFCTFN and MSBA etc. I suppose expecting or even caring about any more than that is a mistake.

I rest my case.