FFS...

Offshore scoping all day...

No more coanglers in the BASS Opens...

For f*#$s sake, all of the above tend to make avid pro-am bass tournament coanglers (those that compete against each other from the back of pro's boats in these competitive draw bass fishing tournaments aka "backdeck bassheads") groan and worry about the future of the sport that they love. Is coangling dying?  Is there really no future for the non-shared weight coangler in the sport that we love? 

Let's examine that question...

There has been a lot of chatter over the last year or so about the plight of the tournament coangler.  In the last few years, we’ve seen:

• Coanglers lost a national pro-am tour opportunity with the transition to a pro/boater-only national tour in the context of the MLF acquisition of FLW.
• Although MLF has still been offering robust coangler opportunities via the Toyota Series regional pro-ams and BFL tournaments, the closure of the Toyota Series Western Division has decreased the available opportunities for coanglers in the western region of the country.
• Recently B.A.S.S. announced the removal of coanglers from the 2025 BASS Open events.
• Also on the west coast, the BAM Pro-Am Trail, despite growing and drawing 135 pros for their season opener, had trouble filling out the field with a full complement of coanglers (90 fished the tournament leaving ~45 pros fishing solo each day). They've implemented a solution though to try to fill the backs of the remaining boats with high school anglers.

And those are just a few examples.

Although the reduction in opportunities has been primarily at the national tour level and in the West regionally, there has also been a lot of angst among some tournament bass fishermen about the (sometimes publicly minimized, but utterly undeniable) impact of the explosion of forward-facing sonar use on the coangler experience. While some (often those with electronics company sponsorship and/or a vested interest in keeping coangler numbers up) point to other causes for a reduction in coangler morale (e.g., the economy or a natural reversion to a pre-COVID status quo), I believe it’s crystal clear that FFS has impacted the coangler experience. That's not to say that overall the coangler experience is now bad, but it has undeniably been impacted.

The fact that you may draw a boater who spends the day chasing solo pelagic bass suspended over 150 feet of water (leaving you to blindly cast into the abyss) is frankly challenging to frame as a positive.  That said, there are legions of both newer and more experienced hardcore tournament coanglers who are still going to show up, grit their teeth through the less than perfect days, really enjoy the better days, and generally have fun, keep a smile on their face, and compete hard regardless of the acute impact of the new technology.  And for those looking frantically for ways to still be as successful as possible when you draw a "scoper", stay tuned as we’ve got something for you.

And the good news is that many days are not like that at all!  We can still experience the opportunity to have fun, learn a ton, and scratch that competitive itch.

Is coangling dying?  Nope. 

Long live the serious tournament coangler!