Cheating scandal at U.S. Open rocks bass-fishing community

This is a pretty crazy story coming out of California! A California tournament angler by the name of Mike Hart was caught cheating in a WON Open Tournament in California by placing lead sinkers in the belly of the fish that he caught to increase the weight and thus his placement in the standings and ultimately his earnings. People ask me all the time if people cheat in bass tournaments and I always tell them that we are a pretty tight knit group and that very little goes on because if you get caught your never going to be able to fish another tournament again! This guy will have a hard time not getting noticed in any tournament he trys to fish! He is subsequently banned for life from all WON Bass Tournaments and WON has stated to be pressing charges against Hart.

Here is the article from Pete Thomas of Grindtv.com:

Cheating scandal at U.S. Open rocks bass-fishing community

FOR SALE: Nitro 170 TF Rick Clunn Edit. 17ft

I am selling my 1996 Nitro 170 TF Rick Clunn Edition bass boat. It has a 115hp engine by Tracker Marine (Mercury). $5500-OBO Here are some other features:

http://nitro170tf.homestead.com/index.html

Lake Tarpon Report July 5th, 2010

After spending the 4th of July gorging on my buddy Kevins famous smoked ribs, watching my friend Jay nearly blow his hand off a dozen times, and drinking more than my share of Red Stripes it was time to relax, recover and do some bass fishing!

I took friends Kevin and Chris out on Lake Tarpon on the Nitro 929 Monday to see if we could hammer some bass after all the rain we've had. Should be a lot of run-off coming into Tarpon including from our main target Brooker Creek. Kevin was talking about a possible 100 bass day as the conditions seemed perfect with overcast skies and slightly lower temps than we've seen in the past few days.
The day started in front of Chris's house fishing his yearling infested (one-year old bass) man-made pond in his development. I was loading up the boat when I heard a Rat-L-Trap whiz through the air smacking something solid followed by an "OWW!" The first catch of the day would be Chris as he buried the barb of a rat-l-trap in his ankle. After a half-hour of digging around we finely got the barb turned around and snapped off. A little peroxide and a band-aid and we were on our way to Lake Tarpon!

After launching out of Chesnut at about 11:30, we started at Brooker Creek. There was a nice flow coming out but to our surprise there was very little action. We tried in the mouth and out in the surrounding flats but could only pick-up one small one. After an hour or so of working the creek we decided to head down the outflow canal towards the damn and see how that was flowing. We made a few stops and picked off a few schoolies along the way. When we got to the damn, the water was really flowing through but again the action was very slow and we came away from the damn with no bites. We worked back up the canal picking off a few more along the banks on our way back to Brooker Creek. We finished up at Brooker catching a couple more as the action picked up a little bit. Kevin caught a decent fish on a chug bug and I picked up a 17" fish on a junebug Bitters Sling. Overall, the total count was only 11 bass, just 89 short of 100!

Air temps: upper 80's

Water temps: 81 (76 inside Brooker Creek)

Overcast and Humid

Lake Tarpon Xtreme Series Tournament 6/19

This past Saturday's Xtreme tournament on Lake Tarpon was a carbon copy of the past 4 tournaments for my partner and I as we had close to 10 pounds good enough for about 5th place out of 12 boats. We just can't get anything over 3lbs this year but we aren't the only ones! Limits are not so hard to come by but if you can reel in a 4 to 5 lb'er it seems you are set for 1st or 2nd. 1st place was again about 14 lbs with big bass in the 5 lb range. Gone are those 17-20lb stringers it used to take to place on Tarpon and where are those 8-9 lb big bass that used to come in every tournament? I'm not sure if it's the cold winter and hot spring or over-spraying of pesticide or cutting of the hydrilla fields or overfishing but the size is definately down on Lake Tarpon. The numbers are definately still there as my partner and I have been catching 20-30 bass each tournament. This past Saturday, we got most of our fish on the East side of the lake in about 8 feet on the outside edge of a grass line on texas rigged plastics. Don't think the color mattered as we used several different colors and got bites on most of them. The water temps were 88-89 degrees around most of the lake although we found an area that was around 85 degrees but with no fish:)