How do you prepare ??

[greg plunkett]

Tell how you prepare for tournaments? Could use the ideas..

 

[Jim B]

I do three things. I get my rods ready with the baits i think i want to use, i get my boat ready and i get a good nights sleep. I stopped "prefishing" a long time ago since for me it was counter productive.

 

[Herndonpro]

I do the usual prep with the rods and boat ect... With regard to practice it depends on where the tournament is being fished. If it is my home water or a lake I am highly familiar with, I'll generally try to get out a few days prior to the tournament and check what I think will be my best areas. If that fails I'll do some more searching. I prefer not to fish the day before on my home water, don't want to show my hand or pressure the fish.



If I'm on unfamiliar water, which means I'm probably staying overnight I'll have to practice the day before. For unfamiliar water I'll start with a seasonal pattern if conditions are about average for that time of year. Obviously extremely high or low water, weather fronts and wind can change what the fish want to do regardless of the time of year and that has to be taken into consideration. I generally stay shallow if I have limited practice time, because that is what I know best and don't experiment a lot with untested techniques.



One thing that has worked well for me a couple of times this season on bodies of water I don't fish often is continue to practice during the tournament. Just stop and fish areas that look good. Sometimes it didn't pay off, but several occasions I upgraded on places that I had only driven by the day before or had never seen altogether.



Things don't always work out, but half the fun is the chase.





Good Luck. Steve

 

[Jason J.]

I do all the same things as Jim B and herndonpro do for the most part. Another thing I also do if I don't know the lake that well, or at all, is to use the internet. Try to find a few local fishing reports to find out what is working. Im not saying follow the report to the letter if you find one, but it is a good starting point most of the time.

In the end you have to go with what you are confident in and not get to frustrated, every one has zeroed in a tournament at one point or another. Good luck

 

[Greg Duggan]

Ditto on all of the above. Along with being sure to put your trolling motor battries on the charger and be sure to put the damn plug in!



Not that i ever made either one of those mistakes

 

[LEIGH MIDDLETON]

If it`s the beginning of the year make sure to oil and re-spool all reels. As mentioned above, make sure your batteries are charged, full tank of gas, have the TD cell # in case of emergencies. If its an tourny you travel overnight for , lock your boxes and take your transom saver OFF! Imagine yourself in the wrong part of town at dark so to speak...LOL. Anything that someone will steal.....they will. Rod Savers are the #1 time saver for tournament morning.

 

[David Munaretto]

Aerial photos, contour maps, topographic maps, any map I can get my hands on. I try to learn the areas the locals have names for and correspond those back to the maps - so look at fishing reports and maps together. I have a couple GPS synced sites for maps so i can get coordinates right from the map and then I plug them into the lowrance via SD card. Maps, maps, maps, and then some more maps. Arial photos from bing, mapquest, google all can be different and give you ideas - you can often see emergent vegetation, current breaks, etc. right from the photos.



D