Tourney Secrets Part 5 Ready To Fish!!!!

Well this report is my last day of prefish secrets and also the tourney days and what we found out worked the best to catch some great fish. The last day my tournament partner was up to pre fish so we decided that he would concentrate on the west end of the lake and docks and I would stay in the east end of the lake and cycle through my areas that I have found all week and try to find a few more just in case. We both agreed that we would commit to small mouth bass as our main targets and have largies as a back up or for kicker fish. This is an import tip when fishing and event with a team member. Communication and working together is very important. Having 2 boats also let us cover alot of water on the last day. Time and dedication on the water is key to success. I was out on the last day at 6:30 am. What I started to do was i ran down to the Hastings river area and started to "CYCLE" my spots. This is a huge tip and is what helped us do so well. Through the week I kept my journal and wrote down times, wind direction, temps etc on the areas I found fish. I knew when the fish were going to be up in areas and hopefully feeding by my pre fish. CYCLING IS NOW RUNNING THROUGH YOUR KEY AREAS and making sure that the fish are there, note the location the fish are on the structure, note when they are feeding or active, note the outside areas or possible locations the fish can set up on besides the "sweet spot". I did all this cycling without dropping a line in the water. This is when again how important electronics and an underwater camera was so important to us. I drove up on the main areas that we were going to fish and monitored my Lowrance graph on the bow mainly and also my graphs on the dash to mark fish and bait. I looked at the times the fish were up on the sweet spots and again kept notes. My first spot I went up on at 7am which was off an island point had some great fish but they were spread out on the flat in the morning which showed my that they are using the area but not active yet. On my electronics the fish were close to bottom showing no activity and also the bait wasn't in abundance in the area yet. I marked out a trail on my graph and added a few more GPS points. Off to the second prime area and drove over slowly and it was loaded with fish. There was tons of activity on the graph and they were just on the outside of the sweet spot on the zebra mussel and sand beds. Dropped the camera down and saw lot's of fish around. This was at 7:45 am that the fish were on this area. Third prime area I drove over and this was the spot i was most excited for as it had fish on every time I went to it. I pulled up on the top of the rock weed area and nothing. Yes I mean nothing. No fish, no bait nothing. I drove around the outside of the sweet spot and dropped the camera down and again I did not see anything on the graph. It was like they all packed their gear up and went on vacation. Oh well that's smallie fishing and I would check this spot out again 3 more times during the day but no fish were found on it except one 13 inch smallie. I cycled through 4 more prime areas and found fish active on 3 other ones. I was confident we had 5 good areas to fish but also we had 7 other areas that if need be we could fish during the event. The nice thing was also on 3 of the areas that I cycled through I did not see any boats on during the week or so far on the last day hoping that we would have some of these spots to ourselves. I called my tourney partner at 11 am and we talked. So far he has not found any quality dock fish and also that the fishing in the west end of the lake was poor. All his main spots that he has fished had no fish on them. It was a tough day. We decided that after he ran a couple of more areas in the west end that hew would go look for more largies in a few areas that I found fish in during the week but did not have time to cover. By noon with no fish found on his areas in the west end he came to fish areas in the east end. We talked and both agreed that we are committed to one area of the lake that had produced fish during the week, at prior events and to really refine areas so we could maximize out time on the water. Working together as a team was critical for us. We discussed the smallies briefly and we decide that I also should check back on 2 of my prime largie areas and run some of my docks quickly then get back to cycling. I went to a shallow matt bed that held fish earlier in the week. The fish were still on the same areas. Over to the shallow pads and wood and again the fish were still there. I used a Shimano Crucial flipping stick, with a Shimano Castaic reel spooled with 50lb Power pro Super 8 Slick to pitch the sweet spots in the matts and pads. My baits were the Jackall Cover Craw in Black Blue and a Strike King, Flipping tube in Black Blue with a 3/4 and 1 oz Ultra tungsten black weight pegged texas rigged. I ran a ton of docks and only found 1 quality fish with 3 other ok fish. I just couldn't find the right dock pattern I guess so I abandoned that quickly. It was now after 1pm and I wanted to keep cycling spots for tourney day. My partner kept on refining the largies on 2 really good areas and also went to try and find some new water close to other spots again just in case. He was on fish in 2 of the spots. One fish he caught was over 3 plus in one area with also having a some other bites so he worked that area really well to make sure if we need it during the tourney that it was all marked out and we could maximize our fishing time. Going over more spots there were 4 other quality spots up the river that were holding fish with again 1 spot being the best. It took awhile to graph them properly but again electronics played a huge key with the camera also. I fished 2 other areas quickly in the river and 1 spot was on for sure with landing a 3 plus on a tube. Back to the main lake to cycle more areas and also I wanted to go back over our 5 best spots to see if the fish were more active or up on the sweet spots later in the day. This was huge again for us. 2 of the areas that the fish were scattered in the morning on were grouped up in the afternoon and active. Now the pattern and the plan was falling together. I checked some more areas out but were running out of time as we had to be off the water by 5pm on the last day. It's amazing how fast time does go. Well time was up and back on land. When my partner arrived we talked strategy for the event and went over our findings. We both agreed that smallmouth bass would be our primary targets for the vent with largies as a back up. It was time to prepare our gear and go to the meeting. Preparation is so key for an event and also getting your gear ready and organized which I have stressed before. For largies we had 4 rods each tied up and put away in the rod locker. They were a Frog rod with a Spro Bronzeye tied on in Navy Seal colour. 2 Flipping set ups with 1/2 and 1 oz tungsten weights depending where we were going to fish. For baits it was again the Jackall Cover craws and Strike King tubes and Beaver baits. The 4th rod consisted of a wacky rigged flick shake rod for one of us and a Hildebrandt spinner bait set up for me. All my rods reels and line were Shimano, G Loomis and Power pro for these above set ups. Now getting to the smallie set ups which were going to be our main targets for the weekend. We started out with having 4 tube rods tied up. The weights were all 3/16 or 1/4oz weights. Our tubes of choice were darker colours as the water was dirty. we used Strike King, Mizmo and Yum Tubes. We tried to get away with the lightest weights possible. My tube rods were G Loomis NRX rods with Shimano Stradics with Trilene 100% floro 8lb test for main line and 2 with power pro and a floro leader if I needed less stretch with having long leads. I had 2 crankbait rods tied up. They were both Chimano 7'6" crankbait rods with TC4 technology which allows amazing feel, castability and hooksets on fish. I used 2 Shimano Chronarch mg casting reels. For line I used 12lb and 15lb Trilene 100% floro. I had 2 different line lb tests because it allows my baits to run deeper or shallower. I run my crank baits with floro because it sinks, it has less stretch than mono and it has great abrasion resistance when fishing rocks and zebra mussels. I had a jerk bait rod tied up also as I went over earlier. I also had 2 drop shot rods tied up. My rods are G Loomis NRX drop shot rods, teamed with Shimano Stradic Ci4 spooled with 8lb Seagar Floro. I used ultra tungsten 3/8oz round drop shot weights for better feel on strikes and also bottom. All our rods were covered with Rod Gloves which are an amazing product to protect and organize your rods. Again little extras like this keep you fishing longer and maximize your fishing time. After the rods were spooled and tied we went through out tackle. We decided to go as light as possible in the boat and only bring the gear that we were using and had confidence in to use. We made sure that we had extras of all our main baits that would last us more than a day for 2 people. I set up a primary box that I could leave on deck so we did not waste time. I learned early on in my tourney career that don't bring alot of gear that you won't use. I had the what if issues. When we were not catching fish I started to use a bunch of different stuff that I did not pre fish with and spent alot of time retying and trying other baits when I should have stuck with what we had confidence in and used. This is the way I fish now and know it has made me a better angler. The last things was to pick was our net for the weekend and get our culling gear ready. We went with the EGO net I use which is by far the best one either of us has used. It floats if we drop it and also extends one handed to over 8 feet so we had lots of reach for those jumping bass. For culling gear we use Sure life catch and release products, a Berkley tech scale and culling clips, a JP balance beam and also Flip Clips Well packed the boat up, charged the batteries, cleaned my Numa Glasses and got our clothes and food inside ready for the morning. We are ready and prepared for the biggest event of the year. Stay tuned for the the last report on our 3 days on the water and a few more secrets along the way and changes we made to get to the last day.