Bass Fishing Tip of the Week 12/08/08: Bass Tournament Strategies Lesson 3.

In the 2nd lesson I mainly talked about strategies to use during the tournament. This lesson will conclude with more strategies to use during the tournament and weigh in.

1- When fishing your spots, look for a pattern within a pattern. You may have caught fish in hydrilla while prefishing, but did you narrow down where the fish were located in the hydrilla? Were they under the hydrilla mats or were they in the scattered stuff? Were they in the holes in the hydrilla near the edge? Were they on points or in pockets? These are questions you should ask prefishing, but also during the actual tournament. Take a mental note on where you caught your 1st fish and note the fishes size. If the fish is small, you may want to still try the pattern within a pattern but if the 2nd one is small too, it's time to change to another pattern.

The pattern within a pattern works on just about any situation including fishing deep water humps/structure, drop offs, points, shallow vegetation and timber. Be alert and remember this tip.

2- Lure selection is often the key to tournament winners. You should have found out during your prefishing what worked best but that can change during the tournament depending on what time of day you found your magic spot. In general here's what I like to try at different times of the day: a- Early morning- Topwaters such as Devils Horse/Boy Howdy, Rattletraps, and spinnerbaits. b- Mid morning- Ratlletraps, crankbaits, jerkbaits, and soft plastics. c- Noon on- Soft Plastics and crankbaits.

3- Weather will determine what weights to use with your soft plastics (worms/craws). In very windy weather I prefer a heavier weight so I can stay in contact with my worm. This would often be a 3/16 to 1/4 oz weight. In calm conditions I'll use the 1/8 oz or lighter weight to allow a slower fall and still maintaining contact.

4- Never give up in a tournament! Maybe you haven't caught a fish all day that would measure and you only have an hour to go. That last hour can be the "magic" hour and produce a nice limit or lunker which has happened to me on several occasions. No matter what happened earlier in the day keep your head up and keep fishing!

5- Cull fish using a scale. I used to use a balance beam but that just took too long and you had to let two fish suffer during the comparison. Break down and get a culling system or check out this site and learn how to make one.

So start using some of these bass tournament strategies so you can do more catching with less fishing.

Largemouth Herald