Pre-Fishing

My last tournament I was out on the water both days before. We have an extremely muddy river right now, so I was looking for stained or less muddy waters most of that time. I only fished for a few minutes for many hours on the water. I did have a fish roll on a bait that I missed. On tourney day I threw to the same spot and caught him. Much of the rest of my prefishing was unproductive. I caught two or three other fish from a pattern I had worked in a tournament the week before.

What do you do to make pre-fish time on the water worth while?

You know where you caught em before (unless its your 1st visit to the water), and you know that if you start pounding away at likely looking stuff that you'll probably get some bites. This is what you fall back on if your prefish doesn't go well. You should never spend more than 20-30 minutes on anything in prefish. Just keep runnin & gunnin.

As for "sticking" fish in prefish - maybe a week before the contest but certainly not a day or two before it. Learn to shake-off fish & other trickery so they'll still bite on tourney day. removing the hooks from some lures will tell you much, especially on topwaters. Barbs can be removed on crankbaits and hooks can be clipped on spinner/buzz type baits.

You never want to molest bass just prior to competition, you just want to know where they are.

Have a gr8 season! Warren

I fish a lot of soft jerkbaits and in practicealmost never fish a color that I can't see very easily, simply because if I'm looking AT my bait instead of looking FOR my bait, I see a lot more fish reacting to it, and learn a lot more about the population in an area in less time with less soremouthing. I also fish a lot of worm/jig, etc in practice, and almost never hook more than 2 fish from an area, and then mostly for size verification. But I do a lot of 'lifting', where I'll put tension on a fish (sometimes lifting them high enough in the water column to get an eyeball on them) without hooking them. With a jig and trailer in moderate depth (8 to 25 foot) water, it's not all that unusual to be able to lift a fish all the way to within a few feet of the boat without it letting go and without setting the hook. Just slow, steady tension does it.

And I almost never fish treble hook baits in practice because it's too easy to 'stick' a fish enough to turn it off even if you don't actually catch it.

Warren