ESTEVAN – The Bass Battles fishing derby made its return to Boundary Dam south of Estevan during the Saskatchewan Day long weekend.
A total of 24 anglers were part of this year’s event from July 31-Aug. 2, and 165 fish were measured. Matt Terleski of Russell, Man., took home the Bass Battles championship, with five bass that had a cumulative length of 249.7 centimetres (cm).
Another Manitoba competitor, Derek Robbins, was second with 239.9 cm for his catches, while Brian McQuinn of Regina was third at 238.9 cm.
Rene Sehn was the top local entry at 237.1 cm. He was the leader after the first round.
Terleski had the longest fish at 53.3 centimetres.
“We saw some great photo submissions, and several of the anglers also chose to try out MyCatch’s new video release option,” stated a tournament wrapup on the Bass Battles Facebook page. “This year’s tournament was also notable for having a grand total of zero submission rejections based on measuring rules being broken, or photo clarity issues, which is amazing for us to see. Again, a huge thank you to the participating anglers for making this tournament run so smoothly.”
The tournament was organized by Angler’s Atlas, and the fish were measured using the Angler’s Atlas MyCatch app. Dallas Kirkpatrick with Angler’s Atlas said they have specific measuring rules that anglers have to apply when they submit photos.
He believes it’s the first time they haven’t had a rejected photo.
“The anglers who participated were very conscious of the rules and they did a great job,” said Kirkpatrick.
The tournament has to determine its winners using length instead of weight, because there’s no means to measure weight based on a photo.
“You can enter as many fish as you want,” said Kirkpatrick. “As an angler, you can enter a hundred fish if you choose to, but the system is going to grab your longest five fish, and then add those centimetres together, and that’s your score.”
He noted that many of the anglers in the tournament were local, and have been entered in other fishing derbies in the area.
“Rene has been a really big supporter of ours, fishing in other MyCatch tournaments. This was not his first go-around.”
Kirkpatrick noted Angler’s Atlas had a long-term plan to make the app useful for catch and release tournaments. But the COVID-19 pandemic hit and there was a need for something like this.
They hosted a tournament at Boundary Dam last September using the app.
“We were quite new, we were only a few months into running these types of events last year, so format-wise, a lot of it was guesswork,” said Kirkpatrick, who noted they learned a lot of things put into place for this year.
Angler’s Atlas has had a long-standing relationship with Tourism Estevan, and he’s pleased to continue working with them. Tourism Estevan was the title sponsor this year, and Kirkpatrick said this wouldn’t happen without them and other sponsors.
Tourism Estevan has also supported the Boundary Bass Classic in the past.
