By Brian Waldman
I've never fully understood the way most people prefish and practice for tourneys here in Indiana. I'm betting most guys are guilty of it too, or have drawn someone who was. Hey, I started out doing it too just because that was the way you did it. You know the routine by now. Head down a day or two before the tourney, running around the lake "checking" areas out. Then you tell me how you whacked them in practice when we draw out together, and if only your fish hold we're going to be in good shape. Problem is, your fish usually don't hold up. Many will tell me they "shook them off", leaving them right in the same spot, waiting for our return the next day. Give me a break. Might work for some, but I don't like it. I've seen this system fail way too many times.
Is there a better way? I don't know about that, but there is a different way. This is what I came up with over many years as the best system for me. My routine is always the same, barring some extended off-limits period. I go 4-7 days before the tourney, preferably on a Tuesday or Wednesday (3-5 days before), in part, because those days usually have the least amount of boating traffic and/or other practicing competitors on the lake. I stick anything and everything I want regardless of bait, believing that fish stuck that far in advance are recovered and willing to bite again by the time I get back down to the lake for the tourney. I want to know numbers, size, etc., as well as how they're eating the bait, which color is producing the most or the largest, yada, yada. If I can whack them, I do. In practice I simply want to find as many areas as I can that are holding keeper bass.
Then, the day before the tourney I sleep in and get a good nights rest. No getting up at some ungodly hour to drive to the lake or any extra hotel costs for being down there early. I have a good breakfast, take my time loading everything up and then arrive and launch late morning. After getting there, I just run around for half a day looking over all the good areas identified in practice to see how much pressure they're getting by "day before" pre-fishers, how the water conditions have changed, as well as any other observations I might see, even in areas that looked good but where I caught nothing (things might have changed for the better water wise). Regardless, I never cast a bait that day.
That night I get as much detailed information about the weather for the next day and then combine that with my draw and everything else to set my game plan. I wake up in the morning, check the weather forecast and radar again and adjust if necessary. Otherwise, I run the game plan and adjust "on the fly" based on what the fish and current conditions at that moment are telling me. I "fish the moment" if you will.
Part of what makes this system effective for me is I'm not relegated to fishing 'spots' over and over. I may have killed them in practice on jigs flipped to particular laydowns because my practice day was sunny and post-frontal. If I show up on tourney day and have clouds and drizzle, I'm certainly not going to be pitching those same laydowns with jigs again, at least not initially. I'll be chunkin and winding a bait I may have practiced very little with (chatterbait, spinnerbait, buzzbait) because that's what the conditions call for. The fish see me and my baits once during practice days before the tourney and then never hear from me again until the actual day of the tournament. If I get more than one practice day in, I never duplicate water I have actually already checked, instead continuing to search new areas.
People frequently ask if I ever get concerned about whether my fish will still be there when I come back since I didn't actually check them (read "hook" or "shake") the day before. I really don't even worry about it, unless it was literally the only spot I could catch fish from on the lake in practice. My experience with the waters around here is that bass in most cases don't leave the general area over the course of a few days or a week unless something drastically changes. I'll see that "drastic" when I check things out the day before if it has occurred. Otherwise, I've already established one or more confidence areas and have a darn good idea how many and what quality is in the area. I just then have to figure the bite out in those few areas the day of the tourney. During transition times for instance (prespawn/post-spawn) I know fish will either be heading shallower or deeper, so if they're not where I left them I can usually tell which way they are headed and make the adjustment. Same with current or water level changes, especially on rivers, knowing to move in or pull back.
As the pros I have interviewed keep pointing out, fish change daily, and in many cases hourly, so even getting a bite the day before is no guarantee that you'll get that same fish to bite in the same spot the next day. What if you checked him and got a bite you shook at 2PM? Do you still go to that spot in the morning or do you wait until later? What if it was sunny when he bit in practice and now it's cloudy? Is he still tight to that stump waiting on you to feed him that jig again? How do you know that someone else didn't come along 2 hours after you and stuck that fish while they were practicing? If you shake a bite or two off, how many more are still there and how long will you keep fishing that area trying to find out? How many times have you heard a pro mention that he didn't realize the potential of his spot until it was too late to make a winning charge at the leader?
I don't have to worry about any of these things with my approach. Like I said, it may not work for everyone, and it's not always possible due to off-limits periods, but it has served me very well over the years. At the very least it might get you thinking a little more about your practice routine and whether or not you are getting the most out of your pre-tourney time.
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