Pre-Fishing when you CAN'T

[mofish]

Most of us love to fish tournaments! You read article after article about Pre-fishing for a tournament. The everyday weekend warrior just does not have time on his side to spend a week on the water. Limits on time with family and work keep us off the water more than on it. The price of Gas limits our budgets to fishing when we can afford too. Now I am no Pro-Bass Fisherman, I have a everyday job working shift work, bills and everything else to go with it, but have had some success the last two years in our Couples Tournaments that the wife and I fish and there was NO PRE-Fishing Evolved. That’s right not one day was spent on the water before the tournament began. So I thought that I would give some tips on what I do before the tournament starts.

First thing to get is the most detailed TOPO map that you can find for the lake you are going to fish. Study this map every free minute of time you have. Look for points, creek channels, humps and so on and mark it. I keep an assortment of highlighter marks with me all the time so when I find something that looks like it might hold fish I mark it. Structure is what you are looking for, and by structure I mean anything on the bottom of the lake that changes. What am I saying, for those of you that are new to bass fishing?
Lets say that you find a point on the main lake, now look at the lines on the map and find were the lines come close together on this point. This is a major depth change, or drop off on that point. This is were I would start fishing and if the main river channel or a creek channel swings in close to this drop off, well that makes it even better.

Ok now that you have studied the map and have all your good spots marked lets look at some other factors that will make a big difference. What time of year is it. Many articles have been written on this also. Every one knows that spring and fall you stay shallow and summer and winter you look deeper. I won’t go into this much you can do a search and find all kinds of articles on fishing the seasons.

What about current. By current I mean water movement. This could be from the wind, or river system that you might be fishing. If you want to learn a lot about bass fishing take a look at fly fishing for trout. These guys fish in rivers and streams and they look for current breaks that position the fish for the food (baitfish) to come to them. You can do the same thing bass fishing. Most of the lakes that I fish are just dammed up rivers, and most of the dams have to let water out of the lakes to keep a minimum flow in the rivers that were dammed up. You can do a lot of searches for the river flows on different sites and get a lot of real time data that shows when the dams open their gates and the water starts to flow. Look and study the times that this happen and position your self on some prime structure at that time and be ready for the fish to turn on. Believe me when I say that this water movement will turn the fish on. Its like ringing the dinner bell. One site is Corps of Engineer’s the other is http://waterdata.usgs.gov you can find a ton of data on these sites once you figure out what to look for. Wind driven current is pretty self explanatory. Wind blowing across a point or into a point can really turn the fish on.

I guess what it all boils down to is HIGH PERCENTAGE SPOTS. You want to look for the best place to be at the best time of day to catch these fish. They will be there then its just up to you to figure out what they want. It would be nice to go out and check these spots before the tournament begins but that is what this is about, finding them when you don’t have the time to do it.

How many pros have you read about lately that their spot whet bad or fishing pressure changed during a tournament and they just went fishing and won the tournament because of something they found during the tournament? Several have done it in the past two or three years. I for one took note of this and applied it to what I can do when I just don’t have the time to get out and PRE-FISH..

I'm sure this will open up a bunch of other questions for all of us to think about, write them down here and maybe all of us together can put together some great answers for all to share.

I hope this helps and feel free to contact me either here or at the email address listed if you need any help. I will try and do the best I can to answer any questions..

[johnnie crain outdoors]

Nice going Conley. Good-timely information. There are always times and places we can't pre-fish and you've got a good strategy. So many times my pre-fishing has been a waste of time anyway. Conditions change- another angler beats me to my spot, bad weather etc. I'd say 65% of the time I start all over on T-day. Johnnie

[carl]

At my level prefishing is pretty much prohibited. Most of the Tourys, in fact all of them, put the lake off limits 3 days before the start. There are guys in my club who will prefish, but we all know the lakes so well that it's not an issue with me, although it is with some of the guys. When I go to a lake I'm not familiar with I'll try to get a hold of a map. Now, I don't know the story on these new map cards, but I do know I contacted several map co.s about getting maps for the lakes in our region. They told me that when the impoundments were built, no stats were kept, so maps were out of the question. Maybe you've had better luck than me. The maps we do have I call cartoon maps, they show the general lay of the lake and can be of some help, but in many cases the info is 30 or 40 yrs. old. Carl

[mofish]

Carl believe it or not one of the maps that I have of my home lake is over 20 years old. Alot of the places have silted in BUT I have found some great structure that was shown on this old map that shows on none of the others that are printed. Sometimes those older maps may help lead you to something that got left off the newer maps.. Now using the electronics to find some of these spots would be a book in itself to write about.