the new practice necessity
On the Bass Pro Tour , where anglers get two days of practice prior to each event , practicing on the fly during competition is a necessity . It ’ s a trend continued from the old MLF Cups , when there were no practice days at all – practice occurred during competition .
As a result , with SCORETRACKER ® providing real-time scoring , pros have become quite adept at catching enough weight to get above the Toro Cut Line and then running new water to practice for the upcoming days . With weights resetting to zero after the qualifying round , there ’ s no sense in racking up big weights early in the event , which used to be the goal in traditional ,
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MAHLER cumulative-weight tournaments . On the BPT , the reward of boating a big bag early is getting more time to practice .
But even in standard , cumulativeweight formats , gambling on new water has become a better option than dying on the vine in an area that has nothing more to offer . The evolution of practicing – essentially , fishing new water – during the tournament makes more sense now than ever before , for several reasons .
fast-changing environments
These days , what ’ s here today is gone tomorrow , a fact begotten by both manmade and environmental factors . Weather , water color , water level , bait presence and current velocities change in a matter of hours . With that , it ’ s mandatory to keep a nose to the water to pick up the scent of new bite windows opening .
Plus , today ’ s intense fishing pressure on popular tournament lakes means that traditional patterns are frequently fractured during events . The standard cover options central to pattern fishing — such as flooded bushes , rock transitions , laydowns , channel swing banks , isolated cover , riprap , clay points , matted vegetation and docks — all get throttled by a steady stream of lures . At some point it becomes a better strategy to fish something totally off the wall than to get in the same pattern rotation with everyone else .
technology broadened the horizon
Yesteryear ’ s bass-fishing rig limited anglers ’ ability to cover water compared to modern fishing chariots . Boats are faster , trolling motors are far more powerful and , of course , electronics can now “ see ” in all different directions around the boat .
Dating back to the advent of 3D sonar in the form of side- and downscan in the mid 2000 ’ s , pros began the trend of idling more than they fished during designated practice days . In time , that morphed into idling without fishing during competition . Once an angler secured a solid limit , he would spend hours staring at a screen in search of better schools with bigger fish before making another cast .
Today , utilizing high-speed trolling motors in conjunction with forwardfacing sonar has turned into the newschool way of supersonic sight-fishing – regardless of whether bass are on beds . Much like old-school bed-fishing anglers used to cruise the banks and look for new beds during tournaments , modern competitors troll around in the middle of the lake looking for bass and bait on the fly , at all times of the year . Twenty years ago , you would ’ ve had to poke around out there by aimlessly dragging a worm – far too inefficient to spend tournament time doing so . Nowadays , it ’ s become more effective to idle , scan , troll and beam than to continue making casts .
more confidence
Today ’ s tournament bass anglers , as a whole , are far better than they used to be . Solid fishing information is disseminated at such a fast rate that anglers can glean in several years what it took the pioneers of bass fishing a lifetime to learn . Add to that the use of far better equipment , lures and the lightning-fast search capacity of electronics , and tournament anglers have more confidence now than ever before .
They know what fishy water looks like without wetting a line . They can run into tributaries , look at water color and know if it ’ s fishable or not . Perhaps what was unfishable two days ago is prime habitat now – maybe a big wind blew out the banks during practice , but after a calm first day of the tournament , it ’ s settling back down and getting right again . Regardless of the scenario , new windows are always opening up somewhere , and today ’ s angler knows that staying glued to the same old spots for the sake of familiarity can be a hindrance to discovering these new , potentially winning opportunities .
It ’ s no coincidence that some of the best pros in the game today are also the best at gambling on new water to show them the way to the next fish . Indeed , the line between practice and competition continues to dissolve .
DECEMBER-JANUARY 2024 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 21