By Vance McCullough, AC Insider

The following is not intended to criticize any tournament directors or organizations.

I have a strong respect for those who must make tough calls on short notice while the rest of us have forever to dissect, and often criticize, those decisions. And of course, hindsight is 20/20.

But questions remain. So, here’s some food for thought:

How many tournament days have Bassmaster Opens anglers lost this year, specifically in Division 2? How many PTO days have these anglers, many of whom are balancing their ‘day job’ with their dream job, had to burn? Time sacrificed by themselves and their families. Vacations not taken with the kids. Time set aside to pursue the American Dream but now spent playing cards or twiddling thumbs. Money spent on lodging and food. An investment of time and money forever spent.

Bassmaster arranged the current Opens divisions and the associated EQ tournaments in part to develop and promote a more professional corps of anglers coming up through the pipeline. Is safe boat handling not a required skill for a professional angler?

This morning was supposed to see the launch of the final 2025 Bassmaster Open event of Division 2. To this point, only one of the 3 tournaments in this division has been completed as planned. In fact, 2 of the 3 three-day tournaments have been stripped down to single-day shootouts. Hardly a test of the best over multiple days with changeable conditions.

Can the winners fish, well enough to compete at an elite level, under varied weather conditions? We don’t know. We do know they can watch a screen as long as the waves are flat enough to keep their high-tech transducer below the surface.

There’s a number of very capable, seasoned pros trying to requalify for the Elite Series via the Opens. These guys cut their teeth on windy waters under threatening skies and, occasionally, ideal conditions wherein they could really show off. If conditions nullified a preferred technique, these anglers figured out a work-around and somebody always found the solution. We all learned along with them and became better, smarter anglers.

Everybody won.

In today’s softer, gentler environment a stiff breeze has become cause for concern. But extreme risk aversion is a fast path to irrelevancy.

Do we want drivers to crash? No. But NASCAR would not be the spectacle it is without such eye-catching carnage. Nobody tuned in to watch Evel Knievel successfully jump something as small as a picnic table. When he botched the landing on a 141-foot attempt over the fountain at Cesar’s in Las Vegas, the footage of even his failure became legendary. And when he cleared 50 cars in the LA Coliseum, 35,000 live fans went nuts as he brought his Harley to a safe landing.

It’s good to fail occasionally, as long as we’re reaching for something worth grabbing.

“Safety first,” you say?

Maybe. But anglers in Division 2 of the Bassmaster Opens have, at the time of this writing, fished a mere 5 days out of 10 scheduled competition rounds.

The Bassmaster Kayak Series has only lost 2 days out of a scheduled 10. And they’re fishing from kayaks, not high horsepower motors on seaworthy bass boats with real time weather updates.

At the very least, the cancellation of so much competition under a variety of weather threats has had the effect – intended or not – of promoting those anglers who need calm waters to effectively use their favored electronics whether they have a secondary strength to fall back  on or not. Can these guys power fish, relying on blind faith that they will grind their way into a winning sack of bass? There’s a list of veteran pros who’ve proven they can. They are fighting, often with a family depending on them, to get back on the Tour level and they’ve had exactly 5 days so far to do so. And every one of those days has been favorable for the young tech bros who have a deep well of somebody else’s money to keep their career ambitions afloat.

I don’t wish to infer that there are any intentions on the part of B.A.S.S., it’s leadership or sponsors to rig the playing field in anybody’s favor, but rather to raise a voice of concern over how the general softness of our society may be hurting the spirit of true competition and the bravery historically required to compete at bass fishing’s highest level.

So what were the forecast conditions that warranted cancelation of yet another tournament round? My weather app called for 13 mph peak sustained winds. And that isn’t expected until two hours after weigh in starts. As I type this, the wind is blowing at a rate of a single mile per hour with ‘gusts’ to 3 mph an hour before the scheduled weigh time. Bassmaster states that the National Weather Service forecasted gusts of up to 25 mph.

Does this qualify as extreme weather?

Your thoughts, opinions and opposing points of view are welcome (another throwback to an era when people were tougher and could handle constructive criticism and lively debate).