Hey. The best days of my tournament career have passed me by. I’m not ashamed to say it. But don’t think for a minute I don’t still get fired up over the competition.
By that I mean, if I’m signed up (almost always now with a team partner), I want practice time. I want to study weather and water conditions. And when the game starts, I’m going to scrap for every ounce.
Of course, with the size of fish I usually catch, I have to fight for every ounce! And that means the culling process is everything. Now there are some fine culling systems out there, including some with clever digital tare and cumulative weight features in the newest scales.
But no one system really does it all for me. In fact, while the coolest electronic scale may do the math for you, that is really only part of the process. No matter what scale you use, there is still marking fish for quick ID, but minimal handling, and (for some of us in the heat of the moment) even remembering exactly which fish is next out.
But for plain, meat and potatoes, tough-to-make-a-mistake culling, I like something I saw recently called the QuikSlide Tournament Culling System (www.quikslide.com). The accompanying photo shows what you get: clips with a short, swivel link to a colored plastic T-grip, belt clip, scoreboard and pen for less than 20 bucks.
I know some of you don’t like the stainless steel clip, especially the thought of punching a new hole in a fish that means so much on the day. Well, I’m with you. But in fact, most of the time, you don’t have to poke the fish. Rather, (after opening the clip) you can hold the fish in one hand and from the outside-in, bring the “hook” up through the extreme forward opening of the gill cavity and out the mouth—and then close the clip.
In this fashion, the fish can’t shake and let the open clip scratch the gill filaments. In fact, this is such a safe approach, many serious catch and release guys go after hooks stuck deep in the throat from this very angle. What’s cool though, on the cull, the open clip is pointed away from the sensitive part of the fish, for an even safer release.
Now I’m sure, someone is going to say, “But what if you have one so big, you can’t close the clip around the fish’s jaw and gill opening?” My answer: Buddy, you’re probably not going to have to cull that one.
What’s different about this system than several others is the short tether to the colored handle. And yes, if you don’t have great “sight-fishing” vision in the livewell, you may have to pull out more than one fish, since the markers aren’t floating on top. But they’re also not tangling.
As for the dry erase pen? Great, unless it’s raining. I’m pretty sure, though, you could use the old-fashioned grease pencil to write down the weights.
So tell me, what kind of culling system do you use? What features do you like best?