Many of the pro fishermen we know and read about are fishing the Major League Fishing (MLF) Circuit this year. One of the big differences in the MLF Fishing Circuit and the Bassmaster Circuit is that every bass in MLF that’s caught is weighed, released and counted in the total weight of bass caught for that day. On the Bassmaster Circuit, anglers only bring in their five biggest bass to weigh in for their catch of the day.
I haven’t changed my fishing strategy at all since I've started fishing MLF. On the Bassmaster Circuit, to catch and weigh in the five biggest bass for the day, you must cull numbers of smaller bass for which you don’t get credit. Although people may think professional anglers on MLF will have to change the way they fish, we really won’t. With the MLF, one of the things that will change is that an angler probably won’t leave a spot that’s producing a lot of bass to go look for another location that may yield bigger bass.
I've learned that the lakes we fish will determine more about where we fish than the tournament circuit does. We’ll go to some lakes and encounter bad weather and water conditions and fish only for a few bites. I think this MLF circuit format will benefit some of the competitors who perhaps haven’t done well on the Bassmaster Circuit, because they’ve caught numbers of bass then that they haven’t been able to weigh-in that they can weigh-in on the MLF Circuit. However, at the end of the day, most of the time, the angler who catches the most big bass will win the event. The difference we’ll see is that the MLF angler will weigh in all the bass he’s caught, instead of only the five biggest bass.
I've been fairly successful already on the MLF Circuit bass fishing the same way I have for the last 20 years when I was fishing Bassmaster. I won the MLF World Championship in March, 2018, flipping a Strike King Rodent. That’s why I say that the fishermen on MLF probably won’t be switching how they fish from how they’ve fished Bassmaster. Personally, I’m not changing my style of bass fishing. Of course, I can’t speak for all the fishermen on the MLF Circuit, but more than likely, the anglers on MLF will continue to fish for bass like they always have. My philosophy of bass fishing is, “If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.”
