Yes, Bill Lowen expressed surprise after exiting the weigh-in stage Thursday, but for the opposite reason of those of us who were following him on BASSTrakk.
When the scales officially gave him 18-3, Lowen thought it was about what he’d estimated. Lowen laughed when informed that BASSTrakk had shown him with a 27-pound bag.
Here’s a basic primer for BASSTrakk followers, if you don’t already know: It’s kind of like learning to read Braille. And there’s an exponential factor of two for it to be inaccurate. Two is the number of human beings involved – 1) the angler, and 2) his marshal.
This isn’t meant as criticism, just reality. Many of these boat marshals are dealing with a BASSTrakk phone for the first time. I don’t know how you do on your initial handling of a new electronic device, but I generally suck at it. No matter how much instruction I’m given, trial-and-error is the only way I learn anything – computer related or otherwise. In other words, there was some incorrect input by the marshal on Lowen’s BASSTrakk phone yesterday. It happens.
The angler factor is the other part of understanding BASSTrakk. You have to learn to read the BASSTrakk personalities of the various pros. For instance, Mike Iaconelli often “big-eyes” his fish in providing info for the marshal to input. So his official weigh-in total is often less than what BASSTrakk indicated. Edwin Evers “small-eyes” his fish, as was recently demonstrated on the final day of the Bassmaster Classic. BASSTrakk showed Evers with about 25 pounds; his bag hit the scales at 29 pounds.
I’m a fan of BASSTrakk, just so you know. I think having a “scoreboard” for a bass tournament is a great idea. Sometimes it’s more accurate than others, and every so often, it’s wildly inaccurate, like in Lowen’s case yesterday.
Just so you know.