Amid the cookouts, college football, and related leisure activities that made up the unofficial beginning of fall and the 2024 Labor Day holiday weekend, the National Professional Fishing League (NPFL) dropped some big news on tournament bass fishing anglers, perhaps the first shoe to drop on the ever heated subject of forward-facing sonar and tournament fishing – the prohibition of the use of real-time imaging units beginning with the 2025 season.
An excerpt of the September 2 press release explains the position and rationale behind the decision:
Our concern at the NPFL is whether it’s a proper tool for competitive bass fishing.
Every sport has equipment rules to protect the players and the integrity of the game. As examples, Major League Baseball does not allow aluminum bats so as to protect certain players on defense and to preserve the game’s legacy. Auto racing has restrictions on engines and other equipment to protect drivers and ensure competitiveness. The Professional Golfers’ Association prohibits balls that use technology to overcome shortcomings of skill.
Tournament bass fishing is not different from these other sports in its need to protect the integrity and appeal of the game.
At NPFL, we do not want competitive bass fishing to become a technology arms race where anglers stare at a screen, targeting pixels and losing their connection to the fish we love so much. Forward-facing sonar is changing the ways that anglers approach competition and the ways that fans consume content. It’s also reducing the methods and baits that anglers use to compete.
Our sport is too important and too diverse to allow technology to shrink it to a handful of methods and tackle. Robust competition requires variety, experience, and broad skills. It must be more than an expensive video game.
The NPFL goes on to clarify that other forms of sonar – 2D, side imaging, 360, et al. – will still be allowed and that, “The use of future technology will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
They also state that, “The 2025 NPFL Championship will be conducted using 2024 rules. It’s only fair that the anglers who qualified for the Championship be allowed to compete under the same rules under which they qualified.”
Even for non-bass fishing enthusiasts, this is rather big news as forward-facing sonar is a divisive subject and has spawned more than a few social media debates.
Back in February, Bassmaster Elite Series Angler Chris Zaldain posted a video on his YouTube channel which quickly went viral as he discussed the cost of the varying electronics installed in anglers’ boats to coincide with the start of the 2024 Bassmaster Elite season. This brought the subject of forward-facing sonar, and the price some anglers pay to outfit their boats with the related technologies, to lots of new eyes and ears both inside and outside of the fishing community.
Many anglers who do not use the technology find it to be a form of cheating. Plenty of young anglers look at it as an evolution of the sport and just another tool at anglers’ disposal. Very few anglers, at least for whom I have had the opportunity to speak with on the subject in recent months, remain completely neutral.
Whether it becomes a necessary evil in the future of competitive fishing, or a passing trend only reserved for select outlets and casual fishing will remain to be seen, but one thing will remain true and that’s the heated debates which will most certainly rage on for years to come as anglers far and wide weigh in on the subject.
** Editor’s Note: Two days after this story broke, B.A.S.S. made their own announcement regarding sonar technology on the Elite Series and at the Bassmaster Classic.
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