The idea of practice back then was to find a productive area and tinker around with different lures , figuring out exactly what they would bite , even though the start of competition was still days away . There was plenty of time in practice to change lures , re-rig rods and make repeated passes in the same stretches to see how many more bites an area would produce . Also , there was a lot of the “ going back to check to see if my fish are still there ” mentality .
These days on the Bass Pro Tour and the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit , practice is an all-out bassing blitzkrieg . The top pros in the sport will literally cover 30 to 40 miles of a lake in a single day . It ’ s stunning how quickly they can separate the wheat from the chaff on the fly . Not only are they forced to practice faster , they now have a much more powerful set of tools to crunch lakes down .
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MAHLER redefining ‘ Practice time ’
Since its inception , Major League Fishing has leaned toward a less-is-more philosophy on tournament practice . MLF instituted a “ no practice ” policy at the first Cup back in 2011 . While the Cups are still no-practice events , the Bass Pro Tour and the Pro Circuit both have implemented two days of official practice , which is shorter than conventional practice periods .
That ’ s just two days to practice on places like Okeechobee , Rayburn , Champlain , the Potomac River , or even Lake St . Clair . The cutting down on available practice hours have forced pros to be on their “ A game ” when it comes to maximizing time management in practice .
shrinking a lake
Obviously , lakes haven ’ t physically gotten smaller , but boats have gotten bigger , horsepower is higher , trolling motors are more powerful and modern electronics with digital mapping have become the modern-day miracles to crunching down big bodies of water quickly .
Given today ’ s advancements , pros will make a 50-mile hot lap around a lake in half a practice day . The body of knowledge on popular tournament lakes is so extensive , pros often know exactly what they ’ re looking for before they even get to the lakes . Researching past tournament coverage provides ideas of what the fish should be doing . Those ideas are then laid over digital mapping and Google Earth at home to form a sort of blueprint to search the lake . By the time a pro ’ s boat hits the water for practice , they usually have a very solid idea on where they want to look and what they want to find .
high-speed sampling
Nowadays , practice has evolved into a high-speed sampling of the water conditions rather than an intensive needling under the water . Pros will literally run the lake checking water temperature , water color , clarity , availability of cover , vegetation growth and local fishing pressure . There ’ s a lot of graphing and scanning over places they ’ ve earmarked from digital mapping study . Sometimes a rod is not picked up until noon , if at all .
When a rod is picked up , it ’ s not about catching fish – it ’ s more about searching , feeling and probing to determine the quality of the cover , especially when vegetation is involved . Search baits are primary weapons in covering a lot of water and provoking bites or getting fish to show themselves . Vibrating jigs , rattling lipless crankbaits , spinnerbaits , buzzbaits , Whopper Ploppers and even wake baits are all the star players of keeping the blistering practice pace .
Getting a bite or two usually means pulling the trolling motor up to keep on moving . The object is to stay on the move , keep a low-pressure profile , evaluate water and find threads of high potential . Pros have learned that actually pulling on those threads to see what ’ s there is best reserved for tournament hours . That ’ s when they ’ ll actually spend more time refining a pattern , mining an area ( or “ dialing it in ”) during tournament hours when uncovering a mother lode counts the most .
mixing practice and competition
These days , the most valuable fish to find are ones discovered during the tournament . They ’ re the most current fish and , in all likelihood , they ’ re unpressured and untapped . Finding a wrinkle in conditions that creates a new window – new wind , clearing water , warmer afternoon , the first cloudy day of the week , a new shad spawn , sudden current generation – these are where tournaments are won . With that in mind , more practice is done during actual tournament hours than ever before . This is especially true in the Bass Pro Tour , where pros get big leads over the cut line and can essentially earn a free pass to practice and size up new water during the competition .
Given all this , the line between practice hours and competition hours gets increasingly blurred . No such thing as winning practice ? Think again .
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2021 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 25