Is 17ft long enough for a tournament bass boat?

[chris.olson]

Hello everyone, I am looking into buying an old 17ft fiberglass bass boat and I hope to fish in at least some tournaments but I have a dilemma. From what I’ve researched it seems like they say you need to have to have like a 20 foot bass boat to fish in tournaments

For B.A.S.S. sanctioned events, opens, regional and national, the minimum hull length is 16 ft. Horsepower limit is 250. There is no minimum horsepower requirement. The boat just has to have a functioning livewell and aerator, and all the Coast Guard equipment on it. And they got other restrictions like a pro angler has to fish from the front, the co-angler has to fish from the rear, the co-angler is not allowed to drive the boat, etc..

This sport is called "bass racing". But it's not the boat that catches the fish. If you want to enter with a 16 ft aluminum tiller boat with a 9.9 on it, you can. Among the bass racer crowd you'll get the condescending looks, but who cares? Go out there, have fun and kick the butts of a bunch of 'em that have $100,000 bass racing rigs with your 16ft tiller boat to prove a point.

I fished Bass Masters tournaments for close to 20 years. I finally decided bass racing was not my thing. You're gonna find some of these guys get right uptight about it and accuse you of cheating and whatever they can think of when you beat 'em because they have a $100,000 rig and you just got a "scow".

The day I walked out we held a kid's tournament on a pretty big local lake chain. The rules were, only the kid you took out fishing could fish. The pro angler was not allowed to fish. So I took a little kid out that had a single mom, he never gets much of a chance to go fishing. About an hour into the tournament he tells me, "I want you to fish too." I told him I can't because of the rules. He said, "why not, I want a catch a fish." So I thought, why not? This kid is out here to have fun. So I taught the kid how to fish and we put 15.7 lbs in the livewell. The kid had an absolute blast. When we got to the weigh-in I told the scale master that we were disqualified because the kid wanted me to fish too, and he had loads of fun. Don't count our weight. I had to withstand a 30 minute chew-out from the president of the local chapter about how I broke the rules and yadda yadda. I explained to him that's why I told you disqualify our catch - this little kid was here to have fun and we didn't care about winning any tournament. Fell on deaf ears. I got so mad, the president of the club is really lucky he didn't end up in the lake.

But you know what? A week later I got the nicest "thank you" card from that kid's mom and the kid for taking him out fishing. Not a single other boat in the tournament got one of those, and I've saved it to this day because I made that kid's day. And I never fished another tournament after that.

Have fun. You're in for a learning process fishing bass tournaments, and not on how to fish. You're in for an education on how the social hierarchy works among tournament bass fishermen.