# Catfish Tournament Rankings (Need Your Opinion)



## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

Ok guys.... I need some feedback on this one. My tournament partner and I developed a point system to rank all tournament catfishermen, and we made a website to display the nations top ranked catfishermen. The point system covers all the areas from local catfish derbys to national tournaments such as cabelas so anyone can sign up and be ranked. We thought catfishing has been waiting for a moment like this to where we have a national ranking system to see who is really the best or to determine if you are a professional catfishermen or not. There has been so many gray areas over the years we thought if enough catfishermen and the right people got involved this system would clear a lot of stuff up and unify the world of tournament catfishing. There is one part that people might not like we are charging 25.00 to be on this ranking system which covers our work in entering all the data into our database. The system will go back 1 tournament season and use the current season to determine standings. Let me know what you all think....... the website is www.catproranks.com


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Its a good idea and has a lot of merrit for sponsorship options but I have a few thoughts, first, how are you handling 2 or 3 man teams when they compete, are each individual getting the same amount of "points" or will it be based on "Teams" which I doubt you are doing since everyone has different partners all year when the regulars are not able to make a tourney. 

I am assuming that you are basing points on total tnumber of entries plus some bonus points for winning and or big fish honors so if there are 10 boats, then 1st place would get 10 points plus another say 3 for the win and another 2 for say having big fish so 1st place in that tourney would get 13 points ( 10 +3) and say 2nd place had big Fish so they would get 9 points plus 2 for BF giving them 11 points. This is pretty typical in point ranking clubs as you are already aware of. 

I think the better approach would be to ge clubs to give you the $25 bucks and then they would in turn pass on the "Official" rankings from each of there tournies. If you were start the Official "National Catfish Federation" I believe the rankings would be much more official sounding then your organzation, (no offfense meant) and have clubs enroll into this ranking system through being a NCF club. Just my .02, we have thought all about this in our club so we think its a good idea!!

Salmonid


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Another thought from a rating hungry entrant in tourneys, if I have the choice, Ill be fishing the tourneys that are NCF events vs ones that are not, these anglers will inturn be putting pressure on Event leadership by saying, if your not part of the system, I wont be fishing your events, This in turn will help your end. 

From a clubs end, we dont have much money so something like the $25 bucks is about all our club could afford to be in this sactioned event. 

I am sure others will have more input on this from OHCC and DCCC and Neocats etc. 

Salmonid


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

Salmonid said:


> Its a good idea and has a lot of merrit for sponsorship options but I have a few thoughts, first, how are you handling 2 or 3 man teams when they compete, are each individual getting the same amount of "points" or will it be based on "Teams" which I doubt you are doing since everyone has different partners all year when the regulars are not able to make a tourney.
> 
> I am assuming that you are basing points on total tnumber of entries plus some bonus points for winning and or big fish honors so if there are 10 boats, then 1st place would get 10 points plus another say 3 for the win and another 2 for say having big fish so 1st place in that tourney would get 13 points ( 10 +3) and say 2nd place had big Fish so they would get 9 points plus 2 for BF giving them 11 points. This is pretty typical in point ranking clubs as you are already aware of.
> 
> ...


It is based on an individual but whoever fishes on the same team will receive the same amount of points. That was a feat to get over that people switch partners all the time. So team basis was out of the question. We are sort of using a similar point system on what your talking about but on a higher scale of points and a lot of the points are based on the entry fee and the amount of participants. we are using the entry fee as a basis because this will give people wanting to fish big national tournaments more points thus making the sport of catfishing bigger in the long run the more people we have fishing those big tournaments the bigger and better catfishing will become making the payouts much larger which in the long run is what the majority of tournament fishermen want to see.


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Ok, I just read the details on your website, ( Got some banners on top of text so a bit of cleanup is needed BTW) so initially I am thinking, Ill have to fish all the darn Duracats tourneys since there like $180 a boat and a chance to get lots of bigger fish/total weights. so even if I only take 4th against 10 boats, I ll still be able to get more points then say finishing 4 th place out of 20 boats locally with less weight??? I am not sure I like the idea of basing points on entry fees and total weights. 

Hers an example, say a NE Ohio tourny has 30 entries for winning weights of 20 lbs since its all channels but a Gallipolis Tourny has 5 entries but since its mostly flatheads, say the winning weight is 100 lbs? which gets more points?? 

Another thought is our local club allows only 4 fish limits when most have 5 or 6 fish. those tourneys will have more weight, how is that handled?? Perhaps a total weight, divided by the number of fish to get a "average" weight may work, 
so if I had 4 fish for 40 lbs, thats a 10lb average vs a 6 fish limit with 40 lbs would be about 6.5 lb average, just thinking out loud here. Lots of room for discussion. 

Salmonid


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

2 more points, how are you handling total weights when our club does 4 fish limits when most do 5 or 6 fish limits?? 
perhaps doing an "average weight" into the equation base don total weight, divided by number of fish kept.

and lastly, since Ohio now has new restrictive/slot limits, its not fair that I may have to toss back multiple fish over 35" if I already have say 2 blues at 38" and 37" in the boat, State law says only 1 per person over 35" allowed, same with flatties and channels over 28", if so, Ill be steering to KY and Indiana tourneys with 6 fish limits and no restrictions. 

I realize nothing is fair across the board but wanted to point out why i dont think the entry fee and total weights have anything to do with who is the best vs just plain giving points for how many folks you beat, with bonus points for winning and for big fish. Just my opinion here, your milage may vary. 

Salmonid


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

we took that into consideration with the weight factor since there is different quality fish all across the nation and some tournaments are mainly based on blues and flatheads and some are based on just channel cats. the weight is added once for points. So this wont give the southern fishermen a runaway with the points vs. the northern fishermen.

In the question about the ne ohio tournament of channels vs. the gallopolis tournament with the flathead. assuming with both tournaments the same guy got 1st place and paid $50 to get in both 
for the NE tourney he would recieve 1520 pts most of his points coming from beating out 29 other entries and finishing first.
for the Gallopolis tourney he would recieve 350 pts he didn't recieve a whole lot of points because he only had to beat out 4 other teams but he still got 1st.

so weight is a factor but not a huge one.


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

we realize that there is thousands of different clubs out there with different rules and with different rules in each state. We had to choose the best way to incorporate everyone so we couldnt make weight a big factor because of exactly what your saying. You guys only have a 4 fish limit but some other tournament might have a 6 fish limit. 

so heres an ex. the cabelas classic this past october there were 123 teams and the entry fee was $250 to get the max points allowed you multiply those two. That gives you 30750 points allowed. we finished 5th with 246.85 lbs of fish. which gave us a total of 29747 pts for that tournament only 247 pts of that were weight of fish and those were all blues.


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## TeamClose (May 23, 2005)

I would think that it would be better based on the competiors in the tourny, not the tournament itself. Just for example if you have a Cabelas tourny that draws 15 boats and a Cabelas tourny that 150 boats, both with the same entry fee, chances are that you would be competing against better anglers in the 150 boat field. Another example is if you compete in a fund-raiser tourny with 50 boats that the entry is $200 that are beginners, and you fish a Duracats with a entry of $200 that has 7-10 boats, but are all good solid anglers, how to you give more credit to the guy that wins the Duracats?
Just like Ohio Hills Club and Kawanha Club draw about the same number of boats and about the same entry fee and fish the same waters, but next year the Kawanha guys wont let you fish thier tournies if you are a member of OH Hills because every time our guys enter we take a the top positions. Everything for all intents and purposes is the same except the competion is better in the OH Hills.
Then as far as the weight of the fish how do you distinguish between all the vairables of weather, water, time of year or just plain its a good place to fish or a bad place to fish. Example - when I won the Cabelas in Alabama, anybody could catch a good stringer even if you didnt know what you were doing. It was the perfect place to fish, time of year, weather, water temp, etc. Sure we caught 504#, but I would give myself for credit for catching 50# on Deer Creek lake on the worse weather, time of year, water temp, etc. 
The idea is good its just hard to rank ppl w/ so many different variables. I could see if you were ranking ppl that just fish 1 or maybe 2 tourny series, but for all of the country would be hard.
Just my 2 cents


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

All the points that you guys have brought up we have already thought of. We tried our best to explain everything on www.catproranks.com Honestly the person thats going to be the top in the nation is going to fish several different tournaments and several different clubs. If you just worry about fishing at a consistent level the points will take care of itself. 

The world of catfishing needs this point system. So someone needs to step up and do this. Not everybody is going to like the way it works but we had to make it fair for everybody to a certain point. 

The way its set up no one will have a huge advantage over someone else just because of where they live. 

for ex. here is skip martins points all together he fished 20 tournaments last year. He is just about as far North as you can get, and he only fished 3 tournaments out of state. His total for last year was 49246 pts.

If nothing else this list will put you up against your partners in your club and surrounding region.

We appreciate your feedback and if you have any other questions or comments feel free to post. But we feel once we get everybody on this point system everybody will be happy with it.


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## H2O Mellon (Apr 5, 2004)

Wow. Has it gotten that bad?

Man I was so happy when I fished the first couple of tournaments now I almost dread them because of things like this.

Have "we" and when I say we I'm talking about casual catfish tournament fishermen gotten to the point where we need a nationally ranked point system? I am not bashing your idea. I'm just wondering what need this is serving. Is it for egotistical purposes? Are there that many folks out there who have a burning desire to be known or ranked? The truest "professional" catfishermen know who they are and I'm going to bet aren't going to have a need to be on a ranked sytem such as this.

In my opinon any large (especially national) ranking system is only going to be successfull so long as the people being ranked belong in the same exact tournament trails. In the catfish world that's just not going to be possible. Folks who fish Cabela's also fish their local/club tournaments which around here none can deny that DURACats and Ohio Hills have some of the best catfishing anglers out there. Up north everyone knows about Jeff's NEOCats organazation. There are also dozens of smaller clubs in Ohio alone. Add all the other states to the confusion and your just going to have too many variabiles to compare. 

Again don't get me wrong, cudos for thinking of something like this but I'm failing to see what the point is. I guess my thinking is just because someone is fishing a tournament a couple times a month, that doesn't mean they are compareable to John Jamison or Phil King. 

I haven't followed BASS fishing for quite a long time, but are the anglers in BASS and for instance FLW ranked together? To me if you compared this Catfish ranking system to Bass fishing you'r grouping BASS, FLW and local club tournament fishermen into the same group. I just don't see how it's going to work.

But again, I hope the best for you. You've taken an idea and ran with it.


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## tcba1987 (Jun 22, 2004)

All i can say is WOW...........i think it is all about EGOS !!! 

So someone who fishes "big money tournaments" gets more points then someone who fishes small local tournaments ?? Thats crazy !!! 

Oh well have fun with it and see how far it goes ...........maybe it will be a big success..........who knows ???


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## TeamClose (May 23, 2005)

Mellon i agree with you. That's why I havent fished very many tournies outside of OHCC for the last few years. The main reason I fish is to have fun and get away from daily stresses of life. Anymore its way out of control with who is "better" than the next guy. A little competion never hurt anybody but some of the stuff that goes along with the "i'm better than you" snydrome is outrageous. Kind of ironic, when all I could do was fish from the bank and wish I had a boat to fish out of, now all I want to do is just leave the boat in the garage and go sit on the bank and fish!! Good luck to you guys with your ranking system, all it takes is a 1000 guys with egos and you made a quick 25K


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

This point system wasnt made to stir things up or to see who has the biggest ego..... We just thought that people would like to know where they would be ranked. 

One of the main reasons I would want to be ranked would be to see where I am at among people better than me. Me knowing that there are a lot of people out there better than I am just makes me strive to get better maybe its honing my techniques or finding better structure or maybe just spending more time on the water. Its not about knowing if I am the best or not its about improving myself as a tournament catfishermen.

If theres people that just catfish for fun thats great! I go fishing all the time for fun. But I rather there be competition because I think it helps me fish better. 

The only reason why money is being charged in the whole idea is because it takes a decent amount of time to enter someones tournament standings for the year. Its not about trying to make money off of anybody or trying to get rich.


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## fishdealer04 (Aug 27, 2006)

I can see why someone might want to know where they stand, but I agree that egos are going to be a huge part of it. Personally I don't care where I stand. I know there are a lot of guys out there that are better fisherman than me. I believe these same people know that they are good fisherman. I fish for fun and relaxation. I enjoy fishing tournaments very much, it feeds my competitive spirit and I believe that it does make someone fish better and work harder.

If the system works out for you then good, but I have no reason to be a part of it. I know where I stand and who stands above me. I fish mainly local tournaments anyway so I could'nt compete with the bigger tournaments anyway....no matter how you try and make it fair its the people that fish the bigger tournaments are going to get more points.

When I leave a tournement and I get 1st place I know that I fished well that day and out fished everyone else. When I leave in last place I know that I had a bad day and everyone else outfished me. Thats the only ranking I need to know. Having 49000000000000 points means nothing.


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## Doctor (Apr 5, 2004)

This has been an interesting topic I've enjoyed following it from the first post, different concept I might add not sure if it would work or not so here is my take.

I'm not interested in any ranking or where I stand with other catfish tournament anglers. Some people may enjoy that but it's not my cup of tea.

I'm a tournament angler that has been fishing a long time on the river, I still enjoy the competition, Lynn and I enjoy competing against each other and we have a lot of fun doing it. That's our big thing having fun, not who we can beat, or where I rank with other anglers, I just want to catch fish and enjoy my time on the water with the one person that I love dearly and that has the same passion for fishing that I do.

I get asked a lot how many years have you been a Pro my answer to that question is zero, I'm not a Professional fisherman, I'm just a everyday guy that wears a Duracats shirt to promote our Ohio River series, I don't have anything to prove to anybody, I have good days and I have bad days on the river and in tournaments, I run a website that I enjoy helping people out with there learning curves to catfishing, it's all about having fun for myself and Lynn.

The young guns that are coming onto the tournament scene are real good and sometimes there a little bold and have maybe a different idea or two about the way things should be done, nothing wrong with that adds a touch of diversity to the mix.

As I get older I just try to relax and enjoy what little time I have left in this world, cause there is going to come a time when I won't be able to put the boat in the water or fish a tournament and I'm not looking forward to that time.........thanks..............Doc


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## Snobal (Jul 26, 2005)

Catproinnovations said:


> This point system wasnt made to stir things up or to see who has the biggest ego.....


From what I've read on this thread..... it's to see who has the biggest wallet. Don't want to bash your idea and think it's great that you are following something you believe in but..... When it's all said and done, it seems it's all about money (and ego). 

There are many a good fisherman (catfish or otherwise) that could be much better than whoever hits the top of your national list. Unfortunately, many of those do not have the money to fish big dollar tourneys. Now, say they see your list and decide to splurge the $25 to get on and see where they are ranked, all of a sudden there are 15 guys in their town that are "better" then them because they have more money even if the guy can outfish all 15 any given day. This will seriously hurt his ego, not to mention, the chance of any sponsorships if he is trying to make his way into a "pro" series.


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## Catproinnovations (Dec 8, 2009)

Thank you very much for all of your opinions we respect and appreciate each one!

As for the point system it sounds like it not going to pan out but thats why we came and got your guys opinions before we invested any more time or money into.

I hope everybody had a merry christmas and has a happy new year!

Looking forward to the 2010 season fishing with you guys at your tournaments.


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## timmyv (Apr 26, 2006)

One suggestion is to limit the rankings by OHIO and to do it for fun. Also it should be free to get your ranking. I don't believe you will get people to pay for it. Just my 2 cents.


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Personally the idea has merrit but i think the formula isnt right but that is my opinion. I agree, kudos for trying to pull it together!! I think Doc and Mellon hit it on the head with there views about tourney fishing and most of the guys I know fall into the same cetegory. 

Keep us in the loop if you do decide to move forward with it, would be interested in seeing how it works out. 

Salmonid


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## Snobal (Jul 26, 2005)

I agree with Salmonid that the idea has merit. A good starting baseline would probably be to use just average weight turned in but..... There are still many variables that would have to be accounted for. River or lake, weather, time of year, location, just to name a few!


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## flathunter (Apr 5, 2004)

If I had the time and or money, I think fishing some tournys would be fun.

But with that being said, I would be willing to bet that Mellon and Myself will catch more bigger flatheads 40-60-lbs this year, and alot of them from the bank and on smaller water, than all the big water tourny fishermen.

I just wish we had Blue cats in the waters I fish.


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## H2O Mellon (Apr 5, 2004)

Man, I sure hope your right. I'd love to get back to the good ole Flatheads days with a few tournaments mixed in here and there. Hopwfully 2010 will be a better year family health wise than 2009 was.


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## AkronCATS (Nov 5, 2008)

I just signed up for the national ranking system, looks interesting.


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