467 | $2,000 Bass Fishing Tournament! Spring Bass Bash EVENT

All right, guys, quick little announcement here

I'm fishing the DMV, I need your help.

This show does not run on sunshine and rainbows

and just for $2.50 a month.

$2.50 a month, you can donate to help keep the show alive.

And I really want to continue to do it.

But if it's not financially suitable,

then that's just not gonna happen.

How you can help is by joining on Patreon.

You can join as a community supporter on Patreon,

which is less than a cup of coffee anywhere on the planet.

And if you want to go even further,

you can unlock the weekend warrior

or Hall of Fame tier list club membership on Patreon,

which comes with a load of great perks and benefits,

including 20% off your orders to tactical fishing company,

15% off your orders to super blue stuff,

10% off your order to tie your crankbaits,

5% off your orders to Jake's bait and tackle,

you also get membership to our four fishing tournaments

that we do for members only,

including the spring, bass, bash

that's about to start in here in two weeks.

Private Facebook group community loads a member only content

monthly fishing reports, ad free episodes of the show

and so much more.

It's gonna be up to you guys

and the community that helps keep this thing going.

Thank you.

We're listening to Fishing the DMV with your host,

Thomas Arons.

Fishing the DMV is brought to you by Jake's bait and tackle,

located in Winchester, Virginia, tactical fishing company

and fishing protect, located just outside Williamsburg,

that doesn't get you jacked up, I don't know what will.

Good evening everybody.

This is the, this is the fishing the DMV, bass, bash.

Okay, spring, bass, bash.

How's everyone doing tonight?

But anyway, so guys, the tournament now

for all Patreon supporters is now good, it is green,

it is good to go.

You can go sign up right now if you're on Patreon.

That's where the pass code will be

along with all the information that we're gonna go over now.

Fair warning, Terny X had a massive bug.

Basically, I was talking to the big dog that runs it.

There was a bunch of tournaments

that were having issues with the signup date.

So it's a code error that he's fixing

and I called him today.

People can sign up for the tournament.

It's gonna say it's only gonna be like a four day tournament

for some stupid reason, but not to worry about it.

He's gonna be working on fixing that.

So once we sign up, all he'll do is

re-extend the date for the tournament.

So with that said, this is gonna be short suite

and to the point and don't worry,

this will be re-uploaded for everybody's viewing pleasure.

So let us get on into it here.

I'm gonna share my screen

and we're gonna be talking about this tournament

and just kinda going through some of the changes

compared to other tournaments that we have going on.

Let's go with boom.

Right, further ado, drum roll please, here we go.

The spring bass, bash.

This is the second year that we've been doing this.

It's absolutely crazy.

We've been in a tournament director now for a year

and some change.

It has been, it's been pretty crazy.

A lot of ups and downs, let's just put it that way.

So this tournament is gonna be starting Saturday,

March 21st and it's gonna be going through May 17th.

This is gonna give you guys plenty of time

to fish the whole spawn cycle.

Is really what I wanted to do.

I wanna do pre-spawn spawn

and kinda get a little bit of post spawn

and that shad bite in there.

So this will give you guys plenty of time to do that.

Again, for this tournament,

you must be an active Patreon supporter

at the weekend warrior tier

or the grandfathered interior or higher

because we also have the Hall of Fame tier.

So go over there and check all of that out.

Let's get into some of the rules here.

So again, it's gonna be starting Saturday, March 21st

at 7am will be Lines N, tournament ends Sunday,

May 17th at midnight.

All fish must be caught within that timeframe.

You must be an active Patreon member at the tiers,

I said it has to be either the grandfathered interior,

the weekend warrior tier or if you are very generous

and really wanna keep everything going,

you can do the Hall of Fame tier as well.

There's also a donation tier,

but that one won't count for the tournament.

You have to be signed up as a Patreon member

before the tournament.

You can't enter the tournament,

find out that you're doing well

and then try to sign up.

If you somehow skirt the system

and get into the tournament,

I'm gonna have to disqualify you

to kinda keep it straight and fair.

Another thing that came up through a text message,

I'm going to end registration the first week of April.

I have just seen that happens is after the first week

and I start promoting the people that caught fish,

a bunch of people say, hey, that's cool.

I would like to join the tournament.

I know there is some pushback about that,

but it's a two month tournament.

If you can't win a tournament

when you've had the full two months that's on you,

I think having a grace period of a week or two

is perfectly fine for how long the tournament is.

So, as always, we do about four tournaments this year.

We're just changing up the format of them.

This is the first one of 2026

because yeah, it was cold as crap.

It was super cold and the Susquehanna

and a lot of our places were frozen solid.

I remember when we did the frostbite frenzy last year,

the weather was a nightmare for people.

And so luckily we just didn't risk it this year

and we've been waiting for everyone to be able to get out,

get everything all dialed in before getting into it.

So, species that are eligible.

You gotta do large mouth

and the old small mouth for the big dogs.

No spotted bass because there's only like two

or three places that you can do that.

It's just a large mouth and a small mouth deal.

You need a license that's completely required

for the state that you're fishing in, no kidding.

You have to follow those rules.

You cannot fish behind a dam.

You just can't.

There can be a lot of he said, she said stuff.

We'll cross that bridge if it gets there

or something like that happens,

but you gotta kind of uphold the rules.

You can fish from the bank, a boat, a kayak,

it doesn't matter.

The fish, though, has to be caught that day

and then photoed.

You can't put the thing in a live well

and then hold it overnight.

That does not count.

You cannot do that.

Measuring boards that you guys have to use.

Any type of measuring board using a kayak tournament

works perfectly fine.

The kayak attack, yack attack, year,

all that jazz works perfectly fine.

How you measure the fish?

Left eye facing out, mouth towards the board.

You all understand this.

If you guys don't please message me, contact me

any way, shape, or form you can,

and you can guys kind of get in on this bad boy.

This is a rule that I put in myself

because it really helps kind of cut down

on some of the cheating stuff is,

when a large mouth dies,

whether it's by volicious intent

or just a, you know, dies in a live well, what have you,

it eyes will get baldness and yellow.

And if it looks like it's just a way too much taco bell,

that fish is dead.

Now, if you're fishing in a bass boat

and you throw a fish in a live well just for the day

while you're fishing and let them go

to take a measurements,

no issues with that at all, perfectly allowed.

Issue is this happened in, well, we can't,

for the man who shot up a name,

the idea was that he was sometimes potentially catching fish,

keeping them in a live well overnight

and then re-entering them.

Don't know if that was true or not.

So that's just why I put that little caveat on there

is you can't like take fish home,

put them in a swimming pool

and photography them all that jazz.

If you're just fishing on, I don't know,

that's Cisco Hannah River.

Don't even know if that's legal at that time of year,

but I'm saying, and you caught a bunch of schooling fish,

let's just say Smith Mountain Lake.

You're out in your bass boat and Smith Mountain Lake

and you have a great schooling bite.

You throw them in the live well real quick,

take a picture of stuff like that, that's fine.

I don't care, or you're double dipping.

I know some guys don't want to fish the BFL,

take a picture of the fish, put it in the live,

that's fine.

Yeah, just trying to catch down on the insane

kind of possible cheating.

If you mismeasure a fish, do not worry about it.

I am not gonna fog you or kill your firstborn child.

Don't worry about any of that stuff.

All that I would do is knock you down.

So if the fish was a 17.75,

I'll knock you down to a 17.50.

That's how that works.

And then I have the ability to judge

whether fish can be disqualified.

Again, you can fish from the bank

about kayak canoe life raft or air mattress,

if you so choose, no issues there.

Again, fishing is permitted in any public body of water,

anglers must abide by their local state and federal

and all that jazz, you all know it.

It's all there that you guys can look at.

And then tie breakers, this is how we're gonna do it.

Largest fish by length, then who caught the fish first?

Third tie breaker, most fish submitted.

And for some how we'll do a coin flip

or we'll just have a fist fight.

That'll be the fourth tie breaker.

Fist fight would be way better for the views,

but we just do with a coin flip there.

The other thing I have the ability to,

since I have some friends,

I can ask for a polygraph if you so choose,

since I do have some friends that can help me administer

that worst case scenario.

It's gotta be a pretty big situation

that we're gonna hit that button

because a lot of other bad sh-dif would probably happen

if we have to go that route.

All right, let's go to the fun stuff here.

So, this is what we're gonna be doing

with the prizes this year.

So we are gonna give away $200 trophies

and hopefully some goody stuff

for the large mouth slash mixed bag division.

$200 in a plaque, $100 in a plaque, $60 in a plaque

for third place, fourth place gets a plaque,

fifth place gets a plaque, okay.

And this is all based off of a $40 entry fee.

We'll get into the entry fees here in a minute.

And hopefully I'll have some goody bags made up for you.

So that asterisk's there.

I'm still working on trying to get some sponsors

to do some goody bag stuff.

Large mouth.

So if you guys are new to this,

I call this like the Hunter Smith rule.

Hunter Smith, good friend of mine,

SB fishing, down a fishing protect.

Jason Church and I bullied him,

bullied basically a child in a fishing tournament.

And he went out there and he had one of the best days

of his life.

I think he caught like 50 pounds,

something preposterously stupid.

And I had multiple big fish awards,

but he literally caught best day of his life.

Everything was like over 24, 25 inches.

And so he literally won every award.

And I just felt like that was fine.

That was, he didn't break a rule,

but I want everyone to be competitive

and have a chance to win something,

especially in a month-long tournament.

If somebody wins the tournament the first day,

it's just boring as hell.

So I call this the Hunter Smith rule.

It's the five biggest,

and this is with any big fish award.

It's the five biggest large mouth caught by separate anglers.

So if you catch two 30-inch large mouth,

first off, where the hell are you fishing?

But you can only, you're only gonna get one of them.

And then the next person who got the next biggest

will be entered for the award.

That way everyone has a chance to win.

So again, they're gonna get $50 and a plaque.

Pretty good deal.

Small mouth division.

This is going to be fun for you small mouth guys.

We, for first place,

same thing is the large mouth division.

You're gonna get $200 and a plaque,

$100 and a plaque for second place,

$60 and a plaque for third place.

Fourth place just gets a trophy,

and then fifth place gets trophy as well.

This is where it gets fun.

Because we did have a few more people signing for Patreon

and we were able to get a couple more sponsors on board

with super blue stuff, fishing protect, all that other stuff.

We are doing the three divisions that we always do,

but we're going down to three places.

Wrong button.

Whoops, that was depressing.

Let's try that again.

So, this is how it works.

I am giving away $50 and a plaque

to the three biggest small mouth caught in Pennsylvania waters.

The three biggest small mouth caught in Maryland waters,

and the three biggest small mouth caught in Virginia waters.

You heard me right.

So, of those three divisions,

now, last, the last,

all the tournament since then, it's been the top two.

Now it's the top three biggest small mouth caught

from Pennsylvania waters, Maryland waters,

and Virginia waters.

This is the best time of year to get out there

and fish for these bad boys.

So, it gives people ample chances

to win a big fish award.

You get $50 and a plaque.

Then, let's get on to the side pot challenges, okay?

So, I had you guys vote.

I had a metric ton of side pot challenges last time.

I really, really, really wanted to do more side pots,

but I was just running out of money,

and as you guys know,

this is what I do right now for a living.

I don't have a day job.

I would love one.

If you guys would like to give me a job, please let me know.

So, I couldn't, I just could not add any more side pots.

If you guys would like to sponsor a side pot

and bring in an extra fish, we can do that.

But for now, here are the side pot categories.

I am giving away $50 and a plaque

to the two largest species of croppy,

the two largest snakehead,

the two largest striper slash hybrid,

and the two largest walleye.

Croppy had the most votes.

So, if you're already a Patreon member,

it had the most votes over all the platforms.

And then this was in a tiebreaker with another species.

I think it was the pickerel.

But the biggest thing, the reason I broke the tie

with the walleye is it gives my,

the small mouthjet, but kayak guys, an extra species.

You know, the croppy snakehead,

hybrid striper stuff, that's really good

for pretty much everyone,

but the Shandindo River, Susquehanna,

Upper Potomac, you know, River Rat.

So, I want to give them one side spot,

one side pot species.

But again, if any of you guys would like to just,

you know, it would be a total of a hundred bucks, honestly.

And then I can cover the plaques

because that's like $16 a peach for the plaques.

So, yeah, if you wanted to cover the hundred dollars

for the two side pots, we could do that.

Otherwise, you know, that's what we're gonna go with here.

So, anyway, a ton of price has been given away.

I went already over it with the big fish award eligibility rules.

Now, two short more anglers have a chance to win.

It's basically, if you catch two side pots snakehead

that are 40 inches long,

you can, your biggest will be counted.

So, you can't win both awards.

So, there's multiple people that can win.

Hopefully everyone understands this.

Additionally, if you're new to this,

Fish and DMV will be promoting the heck out of you.

So, this is really good if you want to have some promotion.

I am one of the biggest fishing podcasts in the world.

I just am.

And so, you will have a huge shout out

on our tournament updates throughout the thing,

which will be a lot of fun.

Participation is encouraged to fish together.

And you guys can talk.

I just want to let you guys know that.

This is gonna be fun.

I never, and this will get into the next thing

we're gonna be talking about.

I never want to be Bassmaster,

Hobie, Bassmaster, Kayak, Mid-Atlantic, NVKBA,

any of that crap.

I don't want to do that.

So, and I think I put this on the tournament rules.

If not, I'm gonna tell you guys here.

You guys can talk to each other.

You can talk back and forth.

It's fine.

Whether you're competing with yourselves

or not, that's perfectly fine.

You can't buy information.

You can't buy somebody's fish.

But if you want to call up your friends,

they have their biting, perfectly fine.

You're not gonna get in trouble.

We're not competing for mortgage payment type of money here.

If you want to go fishing with a friend

that's not in the tournament, that's fine.

If you want to go fishing with a competitor

that's perfectly fine, I want this to be F-U-N fun.

And yeah, be safe, be memorable out on the water.

I am good friends with a lot of the tournament directors

out there.

So just FYI, again, I'll say this one more time.

I'm good friends with a lot of the tournament directors

out there.

I'm good friends with a lot of people

that create the platforms.

If I think you're cheating,

I don't think it would be too hard for me

to try to get you banned for life.

I don't want to go there.

I don't want to do any of that crap anymore.

So let's just not draw.

Let's just not go there.

Let's just have a fun time out on the water.

Be safe, wear stuff.

I do have the ability as people like,

okay, why?

For the people that are new to this,

you'll get nervous about like,

okay, well, I can see where you're fishing and all that stuff.

It's just a deeper question

is to make sure that you're not just going

to the Bass Procia Aquarium, okay?

It's not a detailed map or anything.

It just makes me know that, okay,

I know exactly like it was a public body of water.

And then if you win the tournament,

I can ask you like,

where did you catch all your fish, all that jazz?

You know, you guys know how that works.

So that is that.

I'll open up to any questions people have.

This is going to be short and sweet to the point.

Again, guys, head on over to Patreon.

You got to become a member if you would like to go do that.

I probably could send you guys that stuff now

because I got a couple more things

I want to be talking about here

before we get started.

Ah, do do do do.

Let me get it here.

And so I'm going to drop the link to Patreon

in the episode description.

If you guys are not a Patreon member,

go check that out.

So how did I come up with the cost?

So I want to kind of,

I want to kind of show you guys this.

I just think it's kind of nice

because I want transparency.

Transparency?

Yeah, I think transparency.

What the hell did I just say?

Transparency or something like that?

Good, God.

Sorry about that.

I had a stroke.

My apologies.

Yeah, better turn out the look at it.

Yeah, exactly dude.

Oh, oh, Brock, great question.

So I have only had one or two people

from West Virginia sign up.

And so it doesn't,

I can't financially do a West Virginia division.

It's been coming up a lot.

And so this is what I kind of figured out is,

and this is not 100%,

but for the most of the West Virginia anglers,

they're fishing above Paw Paw on the Potomac River

or the New River.

There's some kind of leniency there.

So what I will do is I will slot you into that.

So if you're up near Paw Paw

and you catch a 22 inch small mouth,

first off, awesome, good for you.

You're just going to be part of the Maryland division.

If you're on the New River,

that's going to be part of,

that's going to be part of Virginia.

It sucks, but if we get 10 more people to sign up

at live in West Virginia,

I'll open up another group there for you.

So with that said, on Patreon,

I am doing this now.

I'm just showing you guys a spreadsheet

about how I math all this stuff,

just so you guys are aware

because I want to make sure that I'm fully transparent

with all this stuff.

So basically at $40 right here for the entry fee,

these are the breakdowns.

And then again, if you're on Patreon,

you can kind of go see this here.

And so I really wanted to make the big fish award

something where you made some kind of money back

on that bad boy.

And so you're going to make $10 back for the $40 entry fee,

but you also get a really cool plaque.

And this is kind of like the cost with taxes

and all four of the plaques.

And then the thing that really kills me is

whether I do mail UPS or FedEx,

it's about $700 plus,

this is probably a little low

because it's usually about $150 to $200 for the TurnieX app.

So make sure this is all correct here, yet perfect.

So with all that said,

I'm going to be covering about $2,000

because I'm basically sponsoring the event.

So fish and the DEV, we'll lose a little bit of money

for this event, that's no big deal

because I love you guys, it's no big deal at all.

But that's how we cover it.

It was asked to me about like,

well, what if we raise it up a little bit?

Well, here's the bookie.

I'm not doxing anyone by giving their name away,

but they ask like, why don't we just raise up the entry fee?

So let's just say we keep it at $55.

Let me zoom in there so everyone can see it.

Well, $55 for the entry fee.

And let's just say I really kick up the amount here

to like 300 bucks.

Well, to do that, I would also have to increase the amount

for payouts for big fish and sidepots.

So if you know, if $55 or you're going to get $65,

it's $10 extra through the whole way.

And then the numbers aren't that much different.

Honestly, if you want to do that, we can.

And we can increase it for the next tournament.

I feel a little sheepish should kind of increase it right now

because it's like sign up as now,

but we can vote on that and talk about it.

But increasing it to $55 from $40 to $55,

it gives you a little bit of a bump for the winner,

but that's just about it.

It just will.

Now, the thing though that my hope is

for my fish and tournaments in the future is,

if we get, you know, we are about,

if we get 200 more Patreon subscribers,

I will be able to start a nonprofit.

And I will be able to make the tournaments basically free.

What I've realized is it's kind of a race to the bottom

when you try to escalate how much tournaments cost

and what you can give out.

And if I can hit kind of my quota for Patreon subscribers,

which is like, we just need 200 more,

I will be able to basically make the tournaments free,

like $15 or whatever.

And then I can give out good prize money,

but you're basically 10 next year,

you return on an investment,

but the prizes I give out are still small enough

to kind of protect against cheating, if that makes any sense.

When you start getting up to $300, $400, $500, and payouts,

I've realized that's when people want to cheat

because they think it's worth a squeeze.

That's when people get nasty

about like this fish is mouth is shut and stuff.

And I just, I'm not a tournament director first.

I am a YouTuber, a podcast.

I do this for fun to give back to you guys.

And so I've realized the more expensive

and the more cool stuff I give out,

the more people want to cheat.

But if prizes are kind of contained,

people are not willing to ruin their life.

Well, anyway, people are not trying to

willing to ruin their life for 200 bucks.

And so I really think in a perfect world,

if I get my 200 more Patreon subscribers every month,

I'm gonna try to drop the entry fees down to like $25, $15.

And then I can give out really good prizes

and everyone can double their money

on big fish awards and stuff.

And I can just eat that cost without a problem.

And what's nice about that is you guys get a good return

on your investment and I just don't think people

are gonna be wanting to cheat for winning 200 bucks.

I think I can be wrong, knock on wood.

But anyway, there's just my lunatic thoughts there.

So we're going in the right direction though.

I really do.

So again, and if for people that don't know,

I mean, kind of bring this up here too, as well.

Let's see here.

So for people that don't know what Patreon is,

it's basically just another stupid platform

because we always have to have these platforms

that you guys can donate.

There are a couple of tiers right now.

There's a grandfathered in tier,

which is basically everyone that kind of believed in me

and kind of kept this thing going.

But that is shut off to the public.

No one else can enter that right now.

They're locked in at $6.

The next one that you can do is now called the Weekend Warrior.

It is $8 a month right now.

It's $8 a month.

You get all the benefits.

You get 20% off your orders to tactical fishing company,

15% off super blue stuff,

5% off all your orders to Jake Spain Tackle,

a load of other fun goodies,

a hollow famed tier, which is going to be capped at 25 people.

That's $25 a month for small businesses

that aren't fishing related.

I had a guy that reached out to me,

he's like, hey dude, I don't know the tackle shop,

but I want to give more 25 bucks.

And you're going to get your name hopefully.

I'm talking to Jake Spain Tackle.

You're going to get your name hung up at Jake Spain Tackle,

all those cool features.

Or if you want to, you can just tip at $2.50 a month.

So if you just want to just support,

you can't do fishing tournaments,

but if you just want to click on here to support,

you can do that for $2.50 a month.

Again, YouTube doesn't pay out worth shit and podcast.

I don't get paid for podcasting on Apple Spotify.

That's all free.

So just let you know.

So anyway, that's kind of the deal.

If we hit get 200 more subscribers,

I can start casting for conservation.

So we can start doing boat ramp stuff

because if you guys don't know,

Maryland is strapped for cash,

and Virginia is a department

while I've resourced my go bankrupt in 2027.

So I'm going to create a nonprofit casting for conservation.

And we're going to do fish stockings, fish stocking,

I think I said that right, fish stocking

and then boat ramp restoration and maintenance.

That's a really passionate thing to me

because there's a lot of like river boat ramps

that just suck and it doesn't need a lot of money

to throw at it, just to fix it up,

throw some gravel down, power wash it.

That's something I could do easily.

And so, but it costs money to start a nonprofit.

So yeah, if I can't get sponsors

because Daiwa, Shimano, Tackle Warehouse,

those big companies do not care

about a regional show because their thoughts is,

we'll just sponsor Bassmasters

because those same people will watch that.

Perfectly fine, that's business.

So we get 200 more subscribers,

turn them into get really cheap.

And yeah, we're going to start a nonprofit

to kind of save the world in our area.

So again, head on over to Patreon.

You can get all that information there if you want,

sign up if you can.

And if you guys have any questions, please, please, please,

reach out to me, fishingdmvadjima.com,

Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz, tomorrow.

We have an amazing episode.

I've recorded a lot of biology reports.

And tomorrow, if I can get it edited in time,

Lake Norman, the history of Lake Norman

from the North Carolina Biology Department,

we're gonna go through the whole history

of what Lake Norman is.

The F1 program, the spotted bass,

we'll kind of cover everything

for Lake Norman, North Carolina.

Did you know Lake Norman was starting to be built

before the Great Depression in the 1900s,

before World War I.

That's when they were thinking about building Lake Norman

up to do hydroelectric.

And it got finished in the 1960s, 1960s.

So that lake basically experienced

the Wright brothers taking off.

And it was finished when we put a rocket

out into outer space.

That's pretty cool.

I don't know.

I like doing these how they built it series

about the history of the lake and the bass fishing.

That is dropping tomorrow at some point.

So brace yourself for that.

Any questions about the tournament.

Please, please let me know.

Again, if you guys aren't a Patreon subscriber,

a club member, go sign up.

And yeah, we looked forward to seeing you there.

And yeah, with that said, we will see you guys next time

on fishing.

Oh, last thing, I'm an idiot.

I am so sorry, Jake's baiting tackle.

Yeah, whoopsie.

I need to promote this.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

Tommy in the future, please edit this out.

This Saturday at Jake's baiting tackle,

we are doing a live bass master classic watch party 10 AM

to 1 PM donuts and pizza will be served.

Come on out and say hi.

I will be there as well.

So if you want to talk to me about the tournament,

yell at me or whatever, go check it out.

Again, this Saturday bass master classic watch party 10 AM

to 1 PM, come out and say hi.

And with that, I bid you guys a do.

You're listening to fishing the DMV

with your host, Thomas Waters.

Fishing at DMV is brought to you by Jake's baitons tackle,

located in Winchester, Virginia, tactical fishing company

andentry fishing protect located

just outside Williamsburg, Virginia.

That doesn't get you jacked up.

I don't know what will...

I don't know.

I don't know what will...

That doesn't get you jacked up.

I don't know, what will.

And that doesn't get you jacked up. I don't know.

That doesn't get you jacked up. I don't know, what will.