Southaven dropped

[silver one]

Recieved My Monthly B.l.a.s.t.t news letter from Tournemant trail. Was looking at the dates and noticed that southaven did not show up. looked a little futher down and noticed that Southaven is not going to be a part of the tournemant trail for the anual bigJon pro/am. this was one of the original events for tournement trail. It did not elaborate as to why however I am curious we always fished the 333 and the big fish contest. anybody know why. here is the link

http://www.tournamenttrail.net/

[fishsniffer]

muskegon wasnt on there either...although it said more dates to be announced..maybe theres still hope for both ports just different sponsor?

[HitMan]

As far as I know, I am not sure if either South Haven or Muskegon are sure if they are going to have their tournaments this year. I am not 100% sure, but that was the talk in the fall. It all has to do with rising costs, the economy, and decrease in participation.

[1mainiac]

Honestly I think the economy has dried up much of the sponser money and The government wants the rest. Sadly for many it is just too expensive to fish in them and many of the events showed little or no sign of trying to reduce the cost or prizes. Perhaps that is a good thing but maybe we need to get more turnout. The fishing is getting better in some ways worse in others as size is coming back slowly but still ports that used to have fish returns in the 500,000 or more with plant reductions are seeing less than half of that. Also most of our next generation would rather play video games than fish. The days of hour or more long waits to launch the boat are over as many of us have given up or are too old to fish hard anymore. Most of us have seen wage reductions the last couple of years but the price of everything has gone up so we all have less money to play with and need to make it last all summer. Without adding in the cost of gear I spent more on Tourny fees and gas this year than my entire season of fishing from last year. Add in that we bought more stuff to be competitive and I was beyond broke by season end. Did I have a great time YEP would I do it again probably but I know I have to figure out what I can Budget in and stick to it. For that reason I may skip all the smaller events next season and just do a few major events and fish for fun the rest of the time. It was a lot of fun but in the end I was actually happy to get the last few done and did not even put in much of a effort in the last event of the GLF as I was running the boat and my wallet on fumes. This why I did not even agree to show up for the Classic. Much as I hated to give up when I was in first place I could not afford to win so we did not run to the fish we pulled up and fished out front and took what we could. No complaints and I am not crying or whining I know in talking with others I was not the only one who either dropped out due to cost or cut back to a point they could not win and if you have to do that there is little sense in entering to begin with. I think this is what is happening to a lot of events as many are going to have to choose to either cut back on the event or cancel it. I am hoping many of the event managers find a way to keep this alive and perhaps build interest in the sport.

[silver one]

Its really to bad for southaven. I would think that they would want whatever dollers they can get. But Southaven is a small town with a big budget and a tight nit group running it. I hope that the steelheaders dont regret there decision. I love to fish a tournement or two a year. Cant do the whole tournment trail as My coaching commitments wont let me and honestly I think I would burn out after a while but I still plan to participate in a couple.

Probobly move south and fish the summer challenge out of St.Joe which is fine. Just further to drive.