TOPIC:

I want to take a few minutes to clear something up. I came up to fish the spring tournament to have fun, meet new people, and hopefully learn some things. We were able to do very well during the tournament and even win it following advice from others. It was a great day. I was only hoping that everyone would be able to catch a fish. I had no aspirations that we would even be able to compete let alone win the tournament. Two of the guys that fished with me work with me. They started telling people at work about it as they were rightfully excited. Another gentleman at work, Kenny Bailes, writes a Sunday column in the Terre Haute newspaper. Kenny heard about it and asked to do a story. We all agreed to sit down with him for the interview at work after work. Shortly after starting the interview, I was called back onto the floor to deal with something. The two guys with me continued the interview. By the time I was able to return, they were just finishing up.
I don't know what all was said while they did the interview. What was printed was that we used 12 rods during the tournament. I don't know if they were saying you are allowed three rods a person and Kenny interpreted it that we used 12 rods or what was said. I have asked both Chris and Jake and neither one really remembers what was said. What I do know is that we used 9 rods. I only owned 9 rods at the time! We had 3 rods on each big board, two on riggers, and one line straight out the back.
This is what happened. We did not cheat. I had no reason to cheat and winning the tournament was not my priority. I am not a tournament fisherman and just want to be able to enjoy my time on the lake. Fishing with you all is part of that enjoyment! I can't control what the guy put in the newspaper or the way he wrote the story.
I don't appreciate people writing nasty things on my crew and I's social media accounts. There is no reason for it. It did not happen.

Why not ask for a retractment and a correction? Author is a friend?Article came out around July 8th or 9th today is the 21st? You didn't see the 12 rods mention in the article til now? Leaves the board sitting in a bad way, and integrity of the contest in question. I see an earlier post that you mention a 12 rod spread? Sorry to be leaning hard John but there are others asking questions and its on you to correct.
As one of the mods I can say I want to see new fishermen. I love out of towners. As locals we undertand how lucky we are to have this fishing in our back yard. The site is for all to use and hopefully gain something from it. The contest are part of but seperate and if we do not have integrity and trust, the contest will be hurt. So it shouldn't be up to us to to answer questions and hope you understand that.

Hi Lickety-Split. I was on Vacation the week of the fourth and didn't see the article until the 11th when I returned to work. I don't live in Terre Haute nor do I get their paper. In all honesty, I didn't read it very closely and didn't notice that he had printed we used 12 rods. I was unaware until it was pointed out to me by an admin here. I have talked to the author and he has sent me a letter of apology for the misinformation. He said that he will put in a retraction but I don't know when it will come out. I have forwarded his apology letter to Dirty as I couldn't figure out how to post it here.
My boat is capable of fishing 12 rods but I am not. I now have 11 rods that I can fish because I have added two for dipsey divers that I didn't have until later. I hope this answers your questions.

I have received the apology letter sent from Mr. Bayless to John. It notes that the author made the incorrect assumption that 12 rods were used because there were 4 anglers that are allowed 3 rods each. It is my understanding that the author will clarify this during his retraction.

One question, why do you keep denying the ability to run 12 rods when on May 2nd, on this forum, you stated "I can run 12 rods if I put everything out".

Why the discrepancy?

www.thesouthend.org/index.php/forum/tackle/2086-lead-core

Well, I tried it once. Open faced catfishing rods didn't work out to well.

I will apologize for the length of this in advance. I won't apologize for my lack of contributing here lately because quite frankly I've had my hands full the last 20 months trying to do a job that in the end didn't pan out. I have a lot of frustration built up the last couple of day related to that and now I have a little bit here. I only am posting because I feel compelled to support a friend.

I don't know the tenor of this site currently as I've been so absent lately. However, I do know the history of this site very very well as I was one of the original moderators and one of the founders to it's predecessor. I know it's predecessor, southender.proboards.com came to life out of board people liked to participate in because it didn't contain a bunch of nonsense. I also know Jeff and Ed well. I know Jeff's passion for this sport and the Southend and it drove him to want to take this site to another level and no real reason other than that. His passion drives his desire for the Southend guys to put on some fun tournaments to get guys together for some fun and to meet each other in person.

John has that same passion. We have been coworkers for a few years now and didn't really know each other that well until recently. He's like a kid in a candy store when it comes to this stuff. Nothing but good to say about the thesouthend guys and all the help when we first started talking about it. The dude can't hardly contain his enthusiasm every time we get a chance to talk the big lake or try to go fish. Seems I have a lot more time for that now suddenly btw.

Hopefully enough people here know me well enough to take my support to mean something. What I can say about John is he's not a cheater. Everything he said in his response is John. He's a great guy, who couldn't care less about winning, just wanting to have some fun and meet some guys he shares time with here. It tears him up because somebody misprinted something based on a misperception and assumption.

I can tell you where Kenny got his bad assumption. From me. I've taken Kenny fishing twice. Once on my boat, once with Brother Nature. Kenny wrote an article on the trip with Brother Nature a few years back. Had a good picture in the article, which Brother Nature took the picture. Kenny made a small mistake in that article too, giving me way more credit than was due, but it didn't seem worth correcting. I've sent a lot of guys or tried BN's way too. Kenny is a good ole boy righting an article for the local paper because the ask him to. He's a top notch hunter (killed the world slam of turkeys) He makes a mistake or two here and there, but who doesn't when it's third hand. What he's not is a great lakes fisherman. He you are allowed 3 rods per persons x 4 = 12 (even I can get that math right). 12 sounds pretty impressive for a news paper article. Not so much to most of us that can run 12 in their sleep.

At the end of the day, it's nothing more than a misprint causing a great guy undue grief. Let it go. If a guy is so driven to cheat to win a $50 entry tournament, he must have to win way more than I do. I figure if somebody is going cheat, they're going to cheat. I care a little more when I'm splitting a $250 or $500 entry with my teammate. John is not that guy. His posts for being able to run 12 rods is his kid in the candy store again because he finally has the rigging to do it(and he wants to share with his clubhouse buddies), but not really the gear. By the way I helped him with that, recently. Plain and simple, luck shined on him one day, running baits most of us don't run in our top 10 (I don't think) trying to stay outside and out of everyone's way.

Jeff nice job of handling it. Ed, send me a pm when you have time. I have a couple unrelated questions. Hope all is going well.

Hello Greg PM sent. Thanks for your post.

Just a couple comments. I have met John a couple times now and have also helped him out with some gear that I have not been using. He seems like a stand up guy to me and I would not have any issues with what he has said in his posts.

The important part of this story I believe needs to be stated by someone that is on the outside, I say this because I did not participate in the tournament or any tournament in the past 3 or 4 years now because of a similar incident that happened to me. I used to fish some of the major tournaments and the SU tournaments after getting back into salmon fishing just to have some fun and meet up some local fisherman after moving here. It is a funny thing being a new guy to the area and have success. I had a lot of experience and some good success with top 5 finishes, a couple wins and was having some fun with a group of guys that didn't have a lot of experience as my crew. After the incident I have continued to fish and help guys from transfer of knowledge to parting with some extra gear I have. Two things I would like to stress;
1. Rules are rules, written in black and white before the tournament. If you have EVIDENCE of a violation it should be given to the tournament committee to be addressed. They make the decision on what to do with it and that is it.
2. There have been several groups over the years running tournaments on the south end and if you would like to participate in those tournaments that may be a good idea, oh wait that's right they do not run them anymore, do to similar and other issues that come from running tournaments.
3. Oops just thought of one more. One of the major fails of other boards, including the reason for the start of this one, has been tournaments. When tournaments becore the most important thing information stops flowing as most will not want to share their spots before tournament day, week, then months.

So be careful or participation will become less and less until there are no more tournaments, just guys getting together to fish and share stories.

Yep that is one thing we are trying to be very cognizant of. We want to keep the entry low and treat them more like a competitive get together since we are all probably fishing anyway. The entire point of the tournaments is to meet people and share info which in turn hopefully leads to more guys talking to each other on and off the site and sharing info.

Wish we would get more guys come out and hang out.