This is an open letter to the members of the Washington State Bass Federation, The BASS Federation Nation of Washington, and to all bass anglers in the state of Washington.
I am writing this letter because I feel it is way past the time for all of us to unite into one organization again. I believe that it is time that we started working together rather than working against each other. In my honest opinion, I feel like the worst thing that has ever happened to us was the break up of the Bass Federation into two factions.
As we have seen, there is room for more than one organization but at the same time it is also easy to see the State Federation was much stronger when we together as one. We had bigger turnouts at our qualifier tournaments. Our clubs were growing at a much more rapid and steady pace then. And we had more pull with WDFW too.
So to get to the point I believe that it is time to put an end to us vs. them. BASS verses TBF. We should all be working as one to better the sport of bass fishing in the state of Washington.
If we could make this happen this is how I envision things working:
1. We could elect one state president and then have a TBF Contact and a BASS Contact that would report to their respective national organizations and back to the Washington Federation President, the board of directors, and each club’s members.
2. All of the bass clubs would belong to one State Federation and the members could choose their affiliations. Each individual club member could be either BASS or TBF member or they could be members of both if they wanted to fish both qualifiers.
3. We could also combine our qualifier tournaments into one weekend with Saturday being for one and Sunday the other national organization. Each day would be run by whichever organization the participants are qualifying for. We could hold our tournaments at different lakes that are close to each other so that we would not be fishing the same body of water.
4. We could fish bodies of water like Lake Sammamish and Washington, Banks and Roosevelt, Tri-Cities and Boardman, Moses and Potholes. We could fish the same bodies of water every year and flip flop which organization fishes which lake. We could even do the same format with our youth championships.
5. This format would save our members gas expenses and it would give all of them more opportunities to qualify for regional and national events.
6. It could also increase the participation in both the BASS and TBF qualifiers because most anglers would fish both since they were there anyway.
In closing I will say that I feel that combining our efforts truly makes sense. It is time that we combined forces and focused our energies toward the betterment of the Federation angler by uniting under one organization with both affiliations instead of both competing for the same anglers.
Thanks for listening,
Gary Morris
WSBF President
Tags:
Posted by Tom Melowitz on September 7, 2019 at 2:45pm
Posted by Eric Urstad on April 3, 2019 at 7:38pm
© 2024 Created by Jordan Doucet. Powered by