Mark Daniels Jr. is right about forward-facing sonar. The problem is, nobody wants to foot the bill for banning it.
The Dock Talk · Opinion Column
Inspired by Mark Daniels Jr. · June 2026
Mark Daniels Jr. said what a lot of professional bass anglers have been thinking but were too scared to say out loud. Forward-facing sonar — the live, real-time underwater camera that lets you watch a fish swim and cast directly at it — has changed tournament fishing forever. And not in a good way. MDJ called it plainly: “That ain’t fishing, bro.” He’s right. But here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to deal with: the companies making that technology are the same ones keeping the sport alive.
Let’s be honest about what forward-facing sonar actually does. It turns a sport built on reading water, understanding fish behavior, and trusting your instincts into something closer to a video game. Instead of figuring out where the fish might be, you just scroll around until you see one on the screen. Then you cast at it. That’s not pattern fishing. That’s not skill. That’s pointing and clicking with a fishing rod.
“MDJ said he made hundreds of thousands of dollars using live scope — and still wishes it was banned. That’s not a contradiction. That’s called honesty.”
MDJ himself admitted he caught 85% of his fish at Beaver Lake using forward-facing sonar. He runs two units on his trolling motor and three screens on his dash. He spent real money on all of it — and he doesn’t even have an electronics sponsor. Think about that. A professional angler is paying out of pocket for technology he believes is ruining his own sport, just so he doesn’t get left behind. That is a broken situation.
The bigger problem
Here’s where your NASCAR comparison hits perfectly. When the sport dropped Winston cigarettes as its title sponsor in 2003, it was the right call — tobacco advertising was on its way out, and NASCAR needed to grow up. But they didn’t drop it and cross their fingers. They had Nextel waiting with a $750 million deal. There was a plan. There was a replacement ready to go.
Bass fishing doesn’t have that luxury right now. Garmin, Lowrance, Humminbird — these electronics companies aren’t just sponsors on a sticker. They’re woven into the identity of the sport. They fund tournaments. They pay anglers. They’re the reason a lot of guys can afford to fish professionally. If you ban forward-facing sonar tomorrow, you don’t just change the rules of the game — you potentially walk away from a massive chunk of the money that keeps the whole thing running.
But here’s what’s quietly suffering on the other side: the tackle companies. MDJ’s title sponsor is Bill Lewis, maker of the original Rat-L-Trap. Hard bait companies like Rapala, Strike King, and Berkley are all hurting. Why? Because when you can see the fish and cast directly at it, you stop throwing reaction baits across open water. You stop burning crankbaits. You stop covering flats with a spinnerbait. The art of presenting a lure to water you think holds fish — that’s gone. And with it goes a big piece of the tackle market.
“You can’t ban the technology without losing the sponsors. But you can’t keep it without losing the sport.”
The way forward
So what do you do? You don’t flip a table and ban everything overnight. But you also don’t pretend this isn’t a real problem just because it’s uncomfortable. The smart move — the NASCAR move — is a managed transition. Create FFS-free tournament divisions. Let the market show what fans actually want to watch. Work with the electronics companies to find a new role for their technology that doesn’t decide the winner before the line ever hits the water.
Sports change. They always have. Metal drivers in golf, polyurethane suits in swimming, carbon fiber everything in cycling — technology pushes in, the rulebooks adapt, and the sport finds its new identity. The question for bass fishing isn’t whether it changes. It’s whether the people running it have the guts to shape that change before it shapes them.
MDJ had the guts to say something. Now it’s the tournament organizations’ turn. The torch is right there on the dock. Someone pick it up.
