Sweet Marissa said:
Seeing bass fishing and poker on ESPN. These are not sports. Bass fishing doesn't even require skill. And poker is a bunch of cards. Put it on the game show network!
Pool takes talent and skill. It makes me sad for all the wasted talent that could have been great, even legendary, in pool and billiards, a real sport.
I think a more accurate statement would be that fishing is a sport that can be enjoyed with some success even if you have little or no skill. Same goes for pool and poker really. But all three require great skill to be near the top. All three do require some luck. But for all three, skill is probably 95+% of what determines your level of success on any particular day. This is proven by the fact that in tournament bass fishing, poker, and pool, the same guys/gals tend to always be at or near the top of the fields in every event. There is not an even distribution of placement and winners as would be expected if luck were the primary factor.
I am not sure you are aware, but bass fishing tournaments do not allow the use of live bait, or any bait that used to be alive. They must use lures made of plastic, wood, metal, etc, you know, the type of materials that bass do not consider to be a part of their diet.
The best bass fisherman take into consideration or have to figure out most of the following, all of which can and most of which usually does have an impact on how many, and how large the bass you are catching will be:
The migration of the fish to different parts of the lake
The season and time of the year
The time of day
Storms or fronts that have passed or are coming within a couple of days
The phase of the moon
The depth of water the fish are in
The depth below the surface or above the bottom that the fish are suspended at
The weather and outside temperature
The water temperature
The water clarity
The water flow rate (mostly for rivers)
The type/color/size/weight of lure to use (the fishes preference varies by lake, and is constantly changing even on the same lake)
How to present the lure to the fish and with what type of retrieval (start and stop, constant speed, bumping lure off of objects or the bottom) and what speed of retrieval (fast, medium, ultra slow) to use to reel the lure in
Tidal flow (mostly for those areas just inland from the coast)
Wind speed and wave height
Ph level in the water
The barometric pressure and whether it is falling, climbing, or stable
Whether the water level of the lake is higher or lower than normal
Cover that is above the water as well as underwater
The type of material on the bottom of the lake in that particular area (clay, sand, rock, vegetation covered etc)
The contour of the bottom (flat, humps, holes, drop offs, old underwater road beds etc)
Type of material/color/size of fishing line to use (yes the fish knows the difference)
Type of reel and pole to use for the type of fishing and conditions
There is more but this was quickly off the top of my head
Besides figuring out and taking all of these things into consideration, the angler also has to have the skill and finesse to make the lure "dance" just right to entice the fish, be able to cast extremely accurately (often to a one square foot spot fifty feet away), be able to stand and balance on a rocking boat for an entire day, and be able to cast out and reel in lures repeatedly and non stop all day (murder on your arms).
To top it all off, the fish has already seen lures from ten other fisherman that day before you got there, and has also seen every lure and presentation imaginable from the twenty anglers a day it encounters throwing lures in it's vicinity, day in and day out, every day of its life.
you know/KNOW its more important these days to be politically correct, than to be correct, even if its totally wrong, we don't want to make any waves, they may rock the boat, and disturb the fish, but wait batman, if we disturb the fish, we won't catch any, and then we won't hurt their mouths either, good idea. 