Anybody who thinks fishing is simply randomly going down the bank and throwing something in the water, has never fished competitively. Quality fish are difficult enough to catch to begin with. Add 200 additional boaters (400 anglers) to the mix, and a great spot in practice may only be a decent spot on tournament day.
In our game, it’s a 5 fish game. Biggest 5 fish over the length limit are what you take to the scales. As we get deeper into the year, I’m learning that I need to find more areas then the 6 or 7 I locate in practice.
At our first tournament at Lake Lanier, I was like a deer in the headlights. A lot was learned at that tournament and I was able to put together a pattern I could duplicate around the lake at our second event at Lake Oconee. I caught 9 fish on tournament day at Lake Oconee, 7 of them were within 2 inches of the 14″ limit. I had a good pattern, I was just doing it in the wrong places.
At our third tournament at Lake Sinclair, I started to put things together. I put one in the boat and lost a good fish due to a co-angler mistake with the net. My co-angler also put 2 fish in the boat. My biggest takeaway is that I need to find enough areas to produce 10 fish, as opposed for looking for enough areas to produce 5.
It is not uncommon for me to fish behind myself. Taboo to so many anglers. I will go through an area with a moving bait and pick off aggressive fish. Next, I will then turn around and slow down and go back through an area.
This is where the co-angler aspect of tournament fishing comes into play. As a co-angler the typical rule of thumb is to throw something different then what your boater is throwing. If the boater is throwing a moving bait the co-angler typically will throw slow bait. This alone has picked off 5 fish from my strategy over the last two tournaments.
The other big mistake I’ve realized I’m making is that I haven’t circled back to my productive areas later in the day. Anybody who has ever seen a shock-boat go down the bank, will confirm that we never catch all the fish in an area no matter how well we fish it. You hear professional anglers all the time talk about winning tournaments out of only a handful of spots. I’m finding enough spots, I’m just not maximizing them.
Lake Eufaula will be a good test for me to put it all together. I know what mistakes I have made and am learning and improving each tournament. Locating good areas as well as the correct patterns is something I have done pretty well as my first season has progressed. Now I need to start circling back to my good areas as well as attempting to find 1 or 2 more then I have been.
