Science: World’s Most Expensive Bump Board?

I’m guessing every bass angler who fishes competitively has at least one in their boat. If you’re like me, you probably have several hanging around the man cave that you’ve accumulated over the years. Even if you don’t fish competitively, you probably still have one. I’m talking about bump boards.

All tournies have size limits of one kind or another, some even have slot limits. You got to be able to know if your fish is fractions of an inch over, or under, so you can collect your check at the end of the day. You can’t go all redneck and use a tape measure or a yard stick for this kind of work. Even worse, I’ve known guys who tried to use a pair of dollar bills side by side in an emergency (honest- measure one sometime). You need the “official” blessed device of said tourney organization, else risk a stiff penalty and embarassment at the weigh-in stand.

Along a similar line, biologists doing fishery surveys want to be just as exact, perhaps even more so. It’s all about numbers and documentation. How many fish, which species, what size…right down to a tenth of an inch in most cases. So while they don’t call them “bump boards”, they do use a standardized measuring tool for this purpose. This keeps records and reporting across all entities equal and consistent.

Here’s the eye-opener though.

A look through the scientific supply catalogs that most resource agencies use for purchasing these “tools” leads you to what might be the most expensive bump board on the planet. I’m not sure what you paid for your last one, but I’m guessing it certainly wasn’t over $200! Yet the going price for the Wildco Fish Measuring Board (pic above) ranges from $219 – $250 depending on supplier.

Yeah, it’s 30″ instead of 18″ or so like most of us use. And yes, it has 3 different scales to utilize – though most of us could probably care less about all those metric equivalents. Remember back in the day when our schools tried to teach us all to use that system so that we could be like the rest of the world? Anyway, no gold plating, no diamond insert markers, not even anodized aluminum. Does have a little brass moving thingy, but I ain’t paying over $200 for that feature. Kind of reminds me of the $800 screwdriver, or those $5,000 toilet seats or whatever they were that the goverment was supposedly paying for.