I first met Melissa Kaintz at the 65th Annual Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Indianapolis, December 2004. At that time, she presented her preliminary data on her work with smallmouth bass. She has since completed that work and defended her thesis, and the full paper is now available online. Entitled Black Bass Tournament Activity and Initial Mortality On Middle Tennessee Reservoirs, it makes for an interesting read. If the .PDF link is acting up, try this .HTML version, though you'll miss out on the pictures and diagrams.
In particular, pay attention to her small tournament observations in Section 1. This seems to be a relative constant that I believe can be applied across the board to many small tourney events being run on our waters every day through the fishing season, from weekend club events to week night jackpots.
In section 2, she has some very interesting data containing radio tracking of smallmouth dispersal from tourney weigh-in sites (of particular interest to Dale Hollow anglers), detailed livewell condition observations, and a few other tidbits such as a significant difference in average size of smallmouth caught in winter tourneys versus summer tourneys. We've always thought or stated that your best shot at a bigger fish is in the winter, now we have some data to back it up!
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