A question for the tournament anglers out there

[WIUbassin]

I was fishing in my first tournament of the season this weekend and My buddy and I ended up getting 6th place. Funny thing was we had the fish to win it except for the fact that our smallest of our limit turned out to be about 1/32nd of an inch short of bumping the 14 inch limit. If it had bumped we would have won the tournament by over a pound. Also we found out that for this tournament if you weigh in a fish that turns out to be short you lose that fish as well as our largest fish(which was a 5.3 ). Now I know most tournaments have some sort of penalty involving weighing a short fish but I was just curious if it was a pretty common place rule to not only lose your short fish but also to lose your biggest fish?

With out weighing the fish at all we would have still gotten second but I have never been one to give up a shot at a win for a garunteed second. I just thought it was a little harsh that our big fish (which also would have taken big bass for the tournament was disqualified to).