I just traded text messages with a good friend from Vermont who is a frequent tournament angler on Lake Champlain.
He said the marina where Feider caught the 6-pounder yesterday is a very popular tournament weigh-in and release site. In fact, 30 bags of 6 fish each were released there in a large team tournament, including a 6-pound largemouth.
Marinas are popular for a lot of reasons, and especially on Lake Champlain. As I wrote yesterday, marinas offer shady ambush points for bass, and habitat for their prey.
In the late 1980s, when I was assistant tournament director, we partnered with several state fisheries agencies in scientific studies to determine if tournament-caught bass remained at weigh-in release sites.
The current live release boats in use by us and other tournament organizations was the outcome of the study. The boats, of course, are used to randomly distribute tournament-caught bass to prevent concentrations from building up in a specific area.