(RI) pickerd

Great job everyone. I know in the northeast we had some very difficult conditions with extreme cold, snow and very high water. The fact that a lot of good fish were caught in these conditions make the catches even more impressive. Thanks to all who entered and thanks to Iain, our jack of all trades, for running this.

Dave Pickering (RI)pickerd RI Fishing either MA or RI

Just got my NACA in the mail today. A BIG thank you to both Dean Brookes and Iain Sorrell for all their hard work and effort in putting this together. The history of our organization spelled out in these articles truly defines who we are and what we stand for. And, the pin was a nice touch and a keepsake for all our members. Great job.

Thanks for your time as state chair.

Nice job, everyone. And, huge congrats to our winner, Chris.

Well deserved and congrats, Barry. I appreciate all you do for this organization.

Sounds like a plan to me. That would basically expand our popular Big 4 event to 3 tournaments which I think is a good thing!

Iain, thanks for a great job and all the work you have done. See you by the bank.

I see a compromise here. How about running this for 2 months.....Oct./Nov. in the fall and May/June in the spring. The problem we have in the northeast is nasty weather in Dec. and nasty weather in early April. In some years, parts of both months are not fishable.

Very impressive video, and a real nice common that you landed. You are on your way and I see a 30 lber in your future! Keep up the great fishing.

The Spring Big 4 is one of our signature tournaments. If we were going to make big changes (as we did in 2018) on how things were going to run as well as the outcome (winners and prizes), it should have been addressed beforehand on this Forum with the members. The BOD should have also discussed these changes and approved/disapporoved of them before the Spring Big 4 was held.

I also did not like the regional aspect of this tournament. That tends to work when you have equal number of entrants from each zone. If you look at the list of entrants at least half were from the northeast zone. Some zones had almost no one. So, no question, the NE guys were at a big disadvantage. I agree with Dave on this point. And only one winner from each zone. Come on man. The BOD discussed this several years back when numbers were way down in the tournament, and we decided to up the number of winners to get more participation. That was the policy we adopted. At the time we decided to award the top ten finishers and this happened several years in a row. I assumed this would happen again this year. And, we had no idea of the number of winners or the prizes until after the tournament was over. This should have been all set up and explained beforehand just like what is done in the FFF. I'm sure this will affect how many enter the Fall Big 4 unless it changes. By the way, I do think this is all a good idea to get input from members as to what they think about how things run. Sometimes, we, as the BOD tend to act on our own as was done here and maybe it is not what the members want. I, too, would like to see input on this from all who entered so we can better serve you next time.

Rex, some nice fish posted. You will find that the Blackstone has many surprises. I have caught a lot of bullhead or horned pout there, but I have also caught large white catfish, hybrid goldfish and even a pike while fishing for carp in the river.

Thanks for the info. And, nice size mirror.

One issue that I see is that on the leaderboard there are several people who are entering fish but not indicating their location or region. Shouldn't that be a requirement since this is a regional event?