2011 MFL Suggestions

[rjruda]

while the league wrapped up about a month ago with what ended up being our best event of the year out on Sarah. The league struggled some this year with only three teams fishing all events. We, as officers> struggled some also this year by having to make some decisions on lake and some other decisions to try to entice a few more teams to fish each event. At most events were did end up more teams showing up at the event.
We are looking for some input for next year's league. so if you have rule suggestions or lake suggestions please share your ideas and opinions with us. We will review all suggestions to see what we need to change that may encourage more teams to joing next year.

[walldigger]

I noticed that your league was on the weekends. Have you ever thought of doing things during the week? I for one would be able to make a week night rather than the weekend. Just a thought and will consider next year. Good luck.

[Teng]

My personal opinion
Since it is the MFL, try holding it on lakes thats within the Metro area. Say perhaps, insider the 694/494 loop.. When u have a Metro league thats not in the metro area, then it gets cumbersome for some people.

Make the tourney 7am-3pm or 6am-2pm for a full day so its worth it for people to do the tourney. Personally, I thought the 6-12 was too short.

[Scum Frog]

My personal opinion
If you go back just a few years ago, you will see that there were about 15 boats to these events and the conversation was more about early entry to guarantee spots. When the league started to make some changes, the numbers dramatically decreased. As officers, look at what went "wrong". For my partner and I, we quit because the league went from a diversified metro league to a far west metro league. Would it be possible to find lakes that offer a balance of metro locations? Do you have to allow people to vote on the lakes? This became a nightmare...people were voting who never joined the league. As officers, could you set up a nice mix of locations, set your schedule early, and just go with it? My last concern would be to not choose holiday weekends.
I guess in summation, I would just reccommend that you review the when's/where's/why's from about 4 years ago when the league was filling up. I for one, would be back in a heartbeat!
For what it's worth...

[AllenW]

6-12 was to short a day.

Considering having to get up at 4 something and getting out to the lake for just 6 hours of fishing it just wasn't worth it.

Plus finding a partner for this got to be to much.

7 to 3 or 4 would be nice, make a day out of it.

Did seem like a lot of the lakes chosen were on the west end, what about lakes like Bald Eagle and such?
I imagine crowded lauches might be a problem on some local lakes?

Anything about a hour or less out from the center of the metro would be nice.

Still have the find a partner problem, but it might be easier this way.

Al

[Dan Wood]

I agree with scum frog and allen above.. make it a full 8 hrs., or 4 hrs. - lunch - 4 hrs... that was fun when we did it like that too..

I also agree that Officers should decide on lakes in advance as much as possible and get the schedule posted early. We need to get back to 1 lake in every region. I know Rob wanted to do this last year and Brett the year before, but we had to make some changes due to the lake conditions.

A discount for early registration makes sense to me. Maybe go back to the max. entry fee and a league registration fee with t-shirt.. extra $10 or whatever left from the shirt goes to overall payout.. one way to get some additional payout beyond the DNR limits.. I think this comes to $50 per team per event and an annual $25 membership (which includes a shirt and whatever is left goes to payout)..

[rjruda]

anyone who would like to volunteer to be an officer please feel free to PM me. The sooner we have a list of officers the sooner we may be able to make decisions regarding the league. All opionions and information provided here will considered in your decisions for the 2011 league.

We really want to return to the prior formats where teams sign up to fish all events versus individual events. The time period will also return to the 6 to 2 time slot, apparent that the switch really hurt us last year.

Please keep the input coming and let me know if you want to help in the planning.