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PRE-TOURNAMENT PRACTICE By Mark Hicks
You want to be on bass from the get-go once a tournament
starts. Otherwise, you might waste most of your day looking for
fish instead of catching them. Those who learn the water and
find productive patterns before a tournament usually lug heavier
bags of bass to the weigh-in.
Efficiency is the key to successful pre-tournament practice,
just as it is during a tournament. It’s crucial that you prepare
before leaving home to avoid problems that can be major time
killers. Inspect your boat, motor and trailer to avert potential
breakdowns. Are your bilge pumps, live-wells, running lights and
electronics working? Are your batteries charged and filled with
fluid?
Tackle preparation is also critical. You surely don’t want to
be spooling reels and searching for baits when you should be
casting. Have a variety of rods rigged with fresh line in
different sizes, and organize all the baits you think you may
use. Keep an open mind and be prepared for everything from
flippin’ to finesse fishing. When a specific fishing situation
presents itself, the appropriate rod and lure will be close at
hand.
Information Gathering
The fastest way to learn about the body of water you’ll be
fishing is to talk to other fishermen. This has paid off many
times for Karl Guegold, vice-president of the Ohio Bass
Federation. Guegold has been a member of this organization for
26 years. He has qualified for a number of regional events and
for the 2003 Bassmaster Classic through the Federation.
“It’s best to have a group of people that you can share
information with,” Guegold said. “That is kind of what the club
thing is all about. I have many good friends, and we try to help
each other.”
By networking with friends, Guegold often learns which areas
of a lake or river system are holding bass, and which baits and
presentations have been catching them. He also does research on
the Internet. There, he finds the results of tournaments that
have taken place where he will be fishing. This gives him an
idea of how much weight it will take to do well there, what
baits are working, and possibly which areas are giving up the
best catches.
“I also check fishing reports, like the ones on the Bass
Fishing Home Page [wmi.org]. It’s amazing how much information
you can get from the Internet these days,” Guegold said.
Guegold uses the information he gathers from friends and the
Internet when he studies contour maps of the tournament waters.
This helps him determine the areas of the lake he needs to
concentrate on. It also helps him pinpoint specific places that
need to be checked during practice. If Guegold has fished the
tournament waters previously, he studies his own notes to
refresh his memory.
On the Water Practice
If the tournament is on a large body of water, Guegold
selects the best one or two areas he has found through his
research. This could be a few large creek arms, the headwaters
of a reservoir, or an upper or lower section of the main lake,
depending on the season and what patterns the bass are likely to
be on. He has learned from hard experience that trying to fish
everything is counterproductive.
Attack the lake in practice with the same enthusiasm you
muster for the actual tournament. That means getting on the
water at daylight and fishing hard for as long as you are
allowed by the rules. This often means coming off the water at
dark. Practice fishing should be more exhausting than the
tournament itself, because you spend more hours on the water.
Start with your best hunch in terms of where the bass will be
and what lures and presentations will catch them. Say, you think
bass will be relating to submerged grass that grows on flats and
humps in creek arms. And, you believe jerkbaits, lipless
rattling crankbaits, and Senko type baits will catch them. Fish
several potential grass beds with these lures until you either
start getting bites or determine that you need to try something
else. This may take 3 or 4 hours or more.
If you are getting bites, continue looking for places that
fit the pattern. If that pattern fails to produce, switch to
your next best hunch, and so on, until you find something that’s
working. Then expand on the pattern that’s getting bites to find
similar places that hold bass. You are generally better off
sticking with and refining one pattern than trying to develop
several of them.
Once you begin to catch bass on a particular pattern, stop
hooking them and start fishing for bites. One way to do this is
by covering your hooks with a piece insulation stripped from
14-gauge electrical wire. The insulation slips over the hook,
and the barb holds it in place. This lets you feel the bite and
often judge the size of bass before they spit the bait,
especially when fishing jigs and soft plastic baits. Every bass
you land in practice is probably one you won’t catch during the
tournament.
“I fish fast in practice and cover as much water as I can.
You don’t want to catch a bunch of fish from any area, just
enough to let you know they’re there,” Guegold said.
If the bite is slow during practice, one bass may be all it
takes to put you on a good limit of fish during the tournament.
Guegold learned this lesson from a bass fishing friend who spent
a day on an electro-shocking boat with an Ohio fishery
biologist. The electro-shocking survey took place on 3,387-acre
Alum Creek reservoir just north of Columbus, Ohio, which is
pounded by fishermen and overrun with boaters. Bass limits here
are rare.
The electro-shocking boat would go down a bank where
Guegold’s friend would usually catch maybe one bass, and it
would shock up 30 bass. The point is that wherever you catch one
bass, there are probably more. And, possibly many more.
“When you’re pre-fishing, you’re trying to take a sample of
what is in a particular area. You don’t want to catch all the
bass before the tournament starts,” Guegold said.
He maintains his upbeat pace in practice, even when the bass
want a slow presentation, such as flippin’ a worm or jig to
flooded bushes. He slides through and area and flips to the most
promising pieces of cover. Key bushes, for example, would be
those on points, in pockets, and isolated bushes that stand
apart from the rest. If he gets one or two bites from these
places, he leaves and figures there are more bass around that he
can catch during the tournament.
If you find four or five places in practice that hold bass
and match a pattern, you might have all you need to do well in a
one-day tournament. If you fish and re-fish those places several
times throughout the day, chances are good that you’ll bring in
a limit of bass.
If you are fishing a tournament that lasts two days or more,
the four or five places you’ve found in practice should get you
off to a good start. However, they probably won’t hold up
throughout the tournament, so don’t get stuck on them. Fish new
spots during the tournament that fit your pattern, as well as
those you found in practice. Successful pros routinely expand
patterns when a tournament is underway. It’s one of the main
reasons they stay ahead of their competitors.
Another thing that separates champion fishermen from average
tournament anglers is the ability to change presentations when
it’s necessary. You might have found aggressive bass in practice
while fishing river ledges with deep crankbaits and heavy jigs.
But, the bass might shun those lures once the tournament begins
due to a cold front, fishing pressure, or maybe a lack of
current.
The average fishermen starts out chucking the crankbaits and
heavy jigs that worked in practice. When he doesn’t get bites,
he assumes the bass aren’t there, runs to his next spot, and
works it over with the same baits to no avail. A savvy angler
would also start with cranks and jigs. But, if he failed to get
bites, he would assume that the bass were still around. He might
slow down and fish a little 4-inch worm on a 1/8-ounce shaky
head jig and load his livewell.
A MATTER OF TRUST
One way to get the most out of pre-tournament practice is to
team up with another fisherman and share information. This works
great in theory. You can cover twice as much water and fish
twice as many patterns. You essentially double your chances of
finding fish.
The downside to sharing information is that it can end a
friendship if one member of the team feels he’s getting
shortchanged. Sharing information has paid off big time for
Bassmaster Elite pros Matt Reed and Edwin Evers. They’ve worked
together for five years now, and this relationship has helped
them both pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournament
winnings.
“The key is to have complete trust in your partner and not
hold anything back,” Reed said. “As soon as one of us gets two
bites doing the same thing, we share that information by cell
phones so both of us can take advantage of it.”
Sometimes Reed and Evers work together when fishing the same
area. For example, while practice fishing for an Elite
tournament at Lake Champlain, they started on opposite sides of
massive milfoil beds and fished toward each other. When they met
in the middle, they told each where they had caught bass and on
which lures.
Aside from trust, both partners should fish a similar style.
Reed and Evers fished team tournaments together for years before
they began competing professionally, and they know each other
well.
“When Matt tells me he’s catching bass on YUM Craw Papi on
laydowns on points, I can do the same thing because I know
exactly how he’s fishing,” Evers said. “But if somebody else
tells me how they’re catching bass, I might not be able to do it
because they fish differently than I do.”
BoatU.S. Website Can Help With Fish, Boat,
Ramp Locator
BoatU.S. has a state-by-state locator service on its website
(www.boatusangler.com/locator.asp)
that can certainly help anglers get advanced info prior to
tournament time.
At this site anglers can search for marinas, boat ramps,
fishing/boating suppliers, info on fish species and even charter
boats, guides and boat rental companies.
This is a one-stop shop of great info and site you may want
to visit, especially if you have a tourney scheduled for an
unfamiliar lake.
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