Bubba SFS Lite Tested in Multi-State Friendly Match

My first fish was a doozy. Six pounds and change on the Bubba Smart Fish Scale Lite. Minutes into the tournament, it took a 5-inch Berkley PowerBait General in green pumpkin on 10-pound-test fluorocarbon leader. I was fishing in a kayak on my 2 ½-acre backyard pond.

It’s one of those things—you sign up to compete in a Florida bass tournament, you’re liable to see a big fish on the board. You hope it’s yours.

But what if you’re fishing in Florida and simultaneously—by way of technology—on a deep, rich Midwestern reservoir?

Thirteen hundred miles away on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, a couple of hot sticks were about to put me in my place!

Tommy Allen and Jed Soxman, rising seniors at Brainerd High in Brainerd, Minnesota, were practice-fishing on Grand Lake for the National High School Bass Fishing Championship.  They were on a 24 Skeeter with Tommy’s father, Thomas Allen, at the helm. Thomas is Digital Content Manager of In-Fisherman, a veteran chronicler of tournament bass fishing, and a good friend of mine.

On both boats—the big Skeeter and my Old Town ePDL+ 120 PRO kayak—Thomas and I each had new Bubba SFS Lite scales to record and compare our catches. The Lite is based on the same technology that powers the Bubba Pro Series Smart Fish Scale—the device used in Major League Fishing tournaments, among others.  

Using the Bubba Fishing App on our iPhones, Thomas and I made up an informal tournament on gentleman’s hours, 9:30 to 5 p.m. No prizes. Just pride on the line.

I would fish against Tommy and Jed. It was Old Man Florida vs. Midwestern Young Bucks.

When you invite an angler to a Bubba App virtual tournament, that angler then selects Tournament Mode on his scale, and the scale and app automatically weighs, enters, geolocates and time-stamps catches. It’s pretty cool. We configured ours for a 5-fish bag limit.

All I had to do was lip-clip a fish, hold it still and wait for the scale to Autolock and confirm. The scale automatically culls as larger fish are added. At the end of the event, winners are declared.

Interestingly, we both fished in 90-degree heat, but under totally different water conditions. While I struggled with extremely low water, the Grand Lake reservoir was up 6 or 7 feet, according to Thomas. “We were fishing in people’s front yards; at one point I caught a bass under a treestand,” he related. The boys found a bite on jigs—fish number one, 2 lbs. 13 ounces, took a white swim jig cast near a flooded oak trunk.  In the afternoon, they found a good ball of fish chasing shad in a section of creek. “In deep shade, we could see bass feeding on the MEGA Live Forward-Facing Sonar,” Thomas said. “It was a perfect ambush feeding situation.”  With a flurry of 1 ½-pound bass weighed on the SFS scale, my six-pounder was a distant memory.   

Energized, I made a valiant effort to save Florida pride—albeit at a middle-aged man’s pace. After a midafternoon nap on the couch, I took my flyrod to a nearly dried-up pond down the street and weighed a couple catches. I returned home, sheltered out a thunderstorm, and finished the day on the kayak. Alas, none of the final 4 bass in my bag limit weighed more than 1 pound.

It was our first run-through with the SFS Lite and Tournament mode on the Bubba Fishing app. We had one minor hiccup, probably our own doing. The first Grand Lake catch, a respectable 2-13, was dropped from the leaderboards. We’re thinking Thomas—replying to a text, searching the web, taking a photo, etc.—may have inadvertently canceled, instead of pausing, his participation in the tournament. Pressing the red ‘X’ at top left screen, instead the red/white square bottom middle, takes you on a one-more-click route to deleting catches. As an insurance measure for new users in a friendly match, the Bubba development team indicates catches may be restored/manually added in Live Tournament view if a tournament is set up to allow that (you leave the “Bubba device only” setting OFF).

The lesson, as with any app, is click carefully—and read the options before your next click. (Bubba software developers may be adding more “guardrails” for those of us with sweaty, fish-chafed thumbs.)

I took it upon myself to paper-pen restore the 2-13 alongside the four next-largest fish in their bag. That—and some ounce conversions—brought Thomas Allen and the Young Bucks to 9 lbs., 0.96 oz, a shade above my own final tally of 8 lbs., 14.24 oz.  

A close finish!  

This kind of virtual, on-the-spot weight format for bass fishing tournaments is interesting, arguably good for fisheries conservation (quick release), and clearly growing. Major League Fishing uses the Bubba Pro Series scale and networks with MLF’s own proprietary ScoreTracker software.

Of course, many events still score fish based on live weigh-ins at a central headquarters. That was to be the case for Tommy, Jed and the hundreds of other eager young anglers from across the U.S. going into the National High School Bass Fishing Championship, which scores a 3-fish bag per team per day. The fish are released.

The Bubba SFS Lite scale retails for $59.99-$69.99. It has a color display, non-slip grip and is water resistant. It’s battery powered. Right out of the box it’s an excellent tool for weighing catches, but it really comes into its own when paired with the Bubba Fishing App (free download) and a Bubba Pro Subscription, $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. Within the app you create an account and will be prompted to the optional subscription; or go to settings and navigate to the Pro upgrade. The Pro subscription unlocks three modes: Rally, where you can track your catches and Personal Bests; Competition, where up to four anglers can score fish on the same device; and Tournament, which enables imaginative, boundary-pushing virtual events like our first annual Fl-Oklahoma Invitational. The Pro Series Smart Fish Scale usually sells at $199.99.