For every athlete the day comes when you’re no longer able to compete either due to age or a career ending injury. Well, for today’s senior bass pros, or what most call the legends of the sport, that day might be approaching a lot sooner than many of them had planned. Today, let’s look at why so many of these elderly pros are looking to load their boats and go home….for good.
Just like any other sport, athletes come to a point in their careers in which they start to contemplate retirement. There comes a day for all athletes where you just can’t compete anymore. So many of today’s bass fishing pros are at that point, mainly due to a technological advancement called forward-facing sonar (FFS). Nothing has impacted the bass fishing world like this latest form of technology.
So, why is this technology having such an impact on the older anglers? Well, I guess it’s the fact that FFS has played right into the hands of the younger generation of anglers moving up into professional bass fishing. They have embraced this technology and taken it to another level which has cut their learning curve and their ability to find fish by 75%. Today’s young anglers all grew up playing video games and FFS for these young anglers is nothing more than just that… a video game.
The old school anglers have not embraced this technology nearly as well as the younger guys and it shows in the tournament results. For proof, look at the Angler of the Year (AOY) standings and you’ll see names like Matt Herren, Lee Livesay, John Cox, Greg Hackney, Jason Christie, Michael Iaconelli, and the 4-time World champion…. Rick Clunn. As of this writing, all are in the bottom 50 of the AOY standings.
So why are the older anglers not accepting FFS? Some feel that FFS is not good for the sport in the long run and would like to see some restrictions or rule changes made to help level the playing field and protect the fisheries. But most will tell you that this technology is here to stay as some of the older anglers are now starting to question if they are going to try and get better with FFS or just get out of the sport all together. Most of these anglers will wait and see if B.A.S.S. or MLF make any major rule adjustments to their circuits regarding FFS before they decide to leave the sport they love so much.
My conversations with several professional anglers have revealed there is some resentment to these new young anglers taking over the sport. The legends of the sport don’t like the fact that these young up-and-coming anglers haven’t paid their dues and are not just winning but dominating events immediately. The techniques that used to work for the older guys and how they have fished their whole career is now no longer allowing them to be as competitive as they once were. This has been a shock and blow to their egos.
For the older anglers, it took years of time on the water to obtain the knowledge they possess while these young guns are doing a better job of adapting to the new technology that’s available. No longer do young anglers have to go through the painful task of fishing daylight till dark in order to compete with the legendary pros.
For the young anglers on the rise, the game has changed as the word scouting today means something totally different than it did 10 years ago. The anglers who are proficient with FFS will spend their day idling, scanning, and marking schools of bass that they can come back to on tournament day. Some are not even having to wet a hook in practice in order to save their fish for the tournament. A recent example is 33-year-old pro angler, Jason Hamner, who spent 14 days on Grand Lake prior to the Bassmaster Classic doing nothing but idling and marking brush tops without ever wetting a hook.
With all this being said, will this force many of the older anglers to retire and idle off into the sunset? Several have told me that it’s something they are considering as they are frustrated with both B.A.S.S. and MLF officials for not doing more to address the (FFS) technology issue. They feel that this new technology will ruin the sport over the next 5 years, as fish today no longer have a safe haven due to FFS.
Fact is, all of our lakes are under assault as more anglers across the country are purchasing these high dollar forward-facing sonar units. It’s not just bass that are being affected, it’s crappie as well. So many crappie guides have told me they are concerned as well, since these FFS units are targeting the bigger breeding population.
To put a bow on this topic and from my perspective, it appears that the senior anglers of both B.A.S.S. and MLF have a choice to make. Either get on board with FFS and get better with it or take their tackle boxes and go home because I don’t see anything changing with regards to this new technology. I truly believe it’s here to stay.
Steve Graf. Angler’s Perspective
