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Beautiful Lake Conroe in Texas, located about 40 miles north of Houston, becomes the second stop for the 2019 Bass Pro Tour, Feb. 12 – 17. Aesthetically-developed shorelines and lots of boat docks, islands, bulkheads and other fish-holding structures add to the lake’s scenery and fishing diversity to make it a quality tournament destination. (Photo courtesy Conroe Convention and Visitors Bureau. Click to enlarge/download)
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MLF Bass Pro Tour Names Texas’ Lake Conroe Its Second Destination
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TULSA, Okla. (Dec. 12, 2018) – Major League Fishing announces the venue for the second stop on its new eight-event Bass Pro Tour is Lake Conroe, a popular recreational lake in Texas located about 40 miles north of Houston. The news follows only a few days after the league announced its series opener is scheduled for Florida’s Kissimmee Chain of Lakes in late January.
Many of the Bass Pro Tour’s 80-man roster, among which are seven anglers from Texas, have experience on the 21,000-acre lake that serves as an alternate drinking water supply to Houston. However, previous knowledge may not be much of a factor during the 2019 Bass Pro Tour competition dates of Feb. 12-17, because recent rains have carried new debris into the lake to create additional bass hideouts and possibly altered some of the known brushpiles and other existing cover in the lake.
“Lake Conroe is a great bass tournament fishery because it has such a diverse variety of cover including docks, islands, bulkheads, humps and standing timber,” said Michael Mulone, MLF Senior Director of Events and Partnerships. “Complementing the usual appearance of a double-digit bass caught during competition, is the great presence and support by our hosting partners and the entire angling community from the region and state.”
“The Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. actively supports catch-weigh-immediate release tournament practices in Texas,” said Dave Terre, Chief Inland Fisheries Management and Research, TPWD Inland Fisheries Division. “The format used by Major League Fishing maximizes survival of tournament-caught bass by totally by bypassing live well containment or a stressful stage weigh-in process.”
“They even use unique tournament rules to promote proper handling of fish while on the water. We know, based on our studies, that larger bass are particularly susceptible to stress and delayed mortality with traditional tournament formats. MLF’s low impact format may be particularly meaningful to Lake Conroe, or others lakes, where fisheries management efforts are geared towards the production of big fish. In our mind, the MLF format has the same impact as simple “catch and release” fishing – It’s practically zero! It really can’t get any better than that,” Terre added.
Although in development over a period of years, the creation and launch of the Bass Pro Tour was officially announced in September. Its catch-weigh-immediate release format is one distinguishing characteristic from the other large tournament trails, but so is the fact that all of the rules for the new tour are decided by and voted upon by the Bass Pro Tour anglers.
Perhaps the most game-changing rule implemented by the anglers to date is when they voted to have no entry fees for participation in the 2019 Bass Pro Tour events.
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MLF pro Alton Jones of Waco, Texas, will be the first to say “Don’t look for any home court advantages” for the Texas anglers. The majority of his major tournament victories over his nearly 40 years of competing have come in other states. Click to enlarge/download)
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“We control our own destiny, and that’s what makes Major League Fishing and this new tour so unique,” said MLF pro Gary Klein, a Texas-resident and co-founder of the league and the Bass Pro Tour. “We see competitive bass fishing as a major league sport and that’s the basis for all of our decisions going forward. As for the Conroe destination, I can’t be more pleased than to have a Texas lake become one of our earliest stops in 2019.”
MLF will feature five hours of live streaming during each competition day with free access to the real-time broadcast being available at www.majorleaguefishing.com. Also, the Conroe Bass Pro Tour event will result in a 2-hour television show that will air on Discovery Channel in the fourth quarter of 2019. It will repeat on Sportsman Channel in first and second quarters 2020.
MLF also has programming on Outdoor Channel, World Fishing Network, CBS, CBS Sports Network and Discovery Channel, and all episodes are available on-demand on My Outdoor TV (MOTV).
For more information about MLF and its anglers, rules and sponsors, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com.
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About Major League Fishing
Developed through a joint effort between Outdoor Channel and the PBT anglers in 2011, Major League Fishing brings the high-intensity sport of competitive bass fishing into America’s living rooms in the form of riveting two-hour TV episodes. World-class anglers are filmed over the course of a six-day event. The show captures their efforts as they utilize a demanding format that allows them to weigh all the “scorable bass” they catch. Unlike other competitive fishing events, live leaderboards in the boats allow anglers to know their standings at all times. For more information about the game, visit www.majorleaguefishing.com and follow Major League Fishing on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can catch all current and past episodes of Major League Fishing on #MyOutdoorTV, the world’s leading outdoor television global, streaming service provider. Also, for more information about MLF anglers, see Game & Fish magazine, the official publication of MLF.
