First, I would like to thank Joe for running a great tournament for our members. I enjoy participating in it and plan on donating half of whatever I might win to fishery related charities. I spoke to Joe and made a couple suggestions for next year’s tournament. Though he has already posted a tournament application for next year, only one member has signed up so far. Therefore, there is time to make some changes if those planning on participating wish to do so. Joe gave me approval to post this so that others might give their input as well. What I would like to see is a tournament with the same categories as we have now but have a $10. or $20. entry fee for each category. The way it is set up now all the prizes are split equally between the various categories, even though there is virtually no interest in winter flounder and very little interest in weakfish at this time. I think there would be a lot more entrants if members were able to join individual categories for the species they prefer to fish for. More specifically, I think there would be a lot of entrants in the fluke, total weight of 5 fluke and striped bass categories. That way the value of the prizes would be larger for the more desired species than the ones most of us rarely fish for. More valuable prizes would probably then generate even more interest.
However, the primary reason I would like to see more entrants is that I believe we should set aside a portion of the proceeds to a fishery related charity such as the reef fund.
I suggest having a 2/3 payout with 1/3 of the proceeds being donated to charity.
Lastly, I suggest that for any unfilled categories we donate the value of that particular prize to charity rather than having a drawing for it.
What do you think?

Paul Haertel