Inside San Antonio’s thriving bank-fishing community.
Published: Jul 28, 2026
The San Antonio Bank Fishing Club has almost 8,000 members on Facebook alone. There's also an email list for the curmudgeons who refuse to participate in social media. That's more followers for the Monthly Tournament Club than the original Cheap Angler YouTube channel has subscribers. Another big difference, the YouTube channel has a global audience, while the SABFC is localized to the San Antonio area only, and it still has more members.
SABFC is still going strong, since its founding in late 2017. Although, the pandemic in 2020 hurt the attendance and it hasn't fully recovered yet. At one point, there was an average of 30 people participating in each tournament, with the most participants being 45. While the average attendance is closer to 10 - 15 people, the core group of loyal members has stayed intact. You can expect to see the same familiar faces every time, with new competitors sprinkled in.
The focus of the group is certainly the monthly tournaments, but that's not the only aspect of it. The Facebook group has cultivated a friendly community for all kinds of fishing in the San Antonio area, and encourages other local channels to post their YouTube videos.
The origins of the club started with a simple concept: A place for people to compete in local bass tournaments without having to travel, pay monthly dues, or take out a new mortgage just to pay the entry fees. At the time, there were several fishing clubs in San Antonio, but none of them actually competed INSIDE San Antonio. They required you to have a new bass boat, excess money to burn, and all the free time in the world to pack up and travel all across the state of Texas to go fishing for a whole weekend every month.
Not everyone is able to do this. Some people have more passion for bass fishing than most pros, but they don't have the means to do what they do. Some people can't take that many days off from work so often. Some people can't afford a bass boat. With those people in mind, combined with the Cheap Angler YouTube Channel philosophy of fishing on a budget, SABFC was born: A bass fishing tournament club where anyone can compete, with no monthly dues, low entry fees, and no boats or kayaks allowed. It's all on foot, a bank fishing bass club.
The rules and format have gone through some changes over the years. The first concept was “Sudden Death” style, where whoever caught the first Bass won the pot. Then it went to “Big Bass” where whoever caught the single biggest bass won. Then it settled into what we have today, with a 5 bass limit, with the most total inches winning the prize. Anglers are given a datestamp card, and are required to take a picture of their catch on their measuring device with the card next to the fish. Rules were added and changed over time to adapt to the number of anglers, and to simplify things. Other rules added were rules that no one expected to need to be said. Like, “No, you can't fish from a boat, this is a bank tournament,” or “You have to take a picture of the WHOLE fish, not just a tiny little tail next to the 20 inch mark,” and “Your Walmart rod doesn't count as a tape measure.” These are all things that needed to be immediately addressed.
There were even some toxic communities that bled into the group early on. In other local groups back then, it seemed that every single post was just a bunch of people fighting and threatening each other over “secret spots.” So a rule had to be made about that. There were some incidents early on that resulted in lots of arguments and lots of bans. So a simple rule was posted, “This is a TOURNAMENT CLUB, so if you don't want 20 people all at once trampling all over your secret spot, don't post your secret spot.”
But in the time since those first few months, the SABFC has really settled into itself. It remains one of the best ways to have friendly competition and camaraderie, and a great place to post and ask questions about the local area. It also hosts tournaments in some pretty unexpected places, like the Downtown San Antonio Riverwalk.
So if you have $10 to spare, and want to see if you can hold your own against some of San Antonio’s Finest Fishermen and Women, check out the Facebook group or email list.