MISQUAH — The Loon Lake Bass Tournament has a winning weight of nineteen pounds, four ounces, a winning species that upends the town’s oldest fishing argument, and a winning boat that will not say where it was, which at least is traditional.

Roger and Dale Pederson brought five smallmouth to the three o’clock weigh-in — a bag taken, they allowed under questioning, “off the rocks, south end, and that’s the whole map you’re getting” — to edge last year’s winning mark by nearly a pound. Second place went to a largemouth bag of eighteen-eleven out of the north-end pads, and therein lies this year’s edition of the argument, freshly reversed.

For as long as this tournament has run, the smallmouth anglers have contended that their fish, pound for pound, fight harder and count for less, and the committee has ruled, annually, that a pound is a pound. This year, with smallmouth taking the blue, the complaint arrived from the other direction: the largemouth camp contends the pads were “off” under tournament pressure, that conditions favored the rocks, and that some manner of adjustment ought therefore to be contemplated. The committee met, deliberated for a period witnesses put at ninety seconds, and reaffirmed the standing doctrine — a pound is a pound — “with,” the chairman noted, “the novelty of the other half of the room objecting for once.”

Harold Aas, 81, watched the entire proceeding from his bench by the cleaning station, as he has for more tournaments than the field has combined birthdays, and issued the definitive ruling on his way to his truck. “Same argument, new direction,” Aas said. “That’s as close to progress as fishing gets.”

Fifty boats fished; all fish were weighed, measured, and released alive, including the winning bag, whose five smallmouth are back on the south rocks this week, considerably better educated (see Fishing Report). The Pedersons take home the trophy, the bragging window — which by tournament custom runs precisely one year — and the obligation, which both brothers acknowledged with visible dread, of defending a spot they have spent a combined thirty years not telling anyone about.