Time is finite; once your tournament day is over, it is over. To have the perfect tournament where you catch lots of fish and lose none, you have to have pretty good time management. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say you have to be perfect in managing your time to have a perfect tournament. Time is your most precious resource. A fisherman can never find more time in a day of fishing, so you have to make hay while the sun shines.
One month before a tournament
Before an angler tackles the fine details as the event approaches, the month before the tournament truly is the start of the crunch time. You only have 30 days before you leave for the event site; so all your lures, rods, reels and line must be ordered from your sponsors, catalogs or the Internet. Make sure that your orders are in with plenty of time for shipping so you don’t end up spending a fortune on UPS or Federal Express.
Even though you may feel you are well-prepared, you will always find something that you need when you are at the tournament site. This cannot be avoided. A fisherman should spend time doing research before a tournament to save on purchasing the wrong items. By calling other fishermen and others who have fished the tournament area, you can be proactive in your planning. If you are well-prepared, you won’t waste valuable time searching for what you need because you will already have it. Planning for tournaments is what makes tournament bass fishing a full-time job. Making the best use of all your time throughout the year makes for the best professional fisherman.
At the tournament site
Hard work, persistence and dedication are all parts of time management. If you have done your homework and researched the body of water you are fishing, made your local connections and generally know your way around the tournament town, you’ve already done a lot of the hard work. Now you can concentrate on the most important subject at hand: catching fish.
Thinking and planning ahead can save much time when you get to a site for the tournament. This allows you to focus on the fishing. The more you allow yourself to focus on just the fishing, the more likely you will be able to fish at your highest potential.
I tend to arrive at each site a day ahead of time in order to get my fishing license, find the launch, fill up the gas in the boat and get my groceries for the week. Having this extra day allows me to relax a little before having to fish the next day. Without this time, anxiety can build and focus can diminish. The extra time allows me to be less rushed during the week ahead. Once all the little things – although important – are done, fishing becomes the goal for the week.
Practice days
Time management is very important throughout the tournament and is key while fishing on your practice days. Planning your fishing strategy – making sure that you cover the majority of the lake – needs to occur prior to the practice days. I map out where I will fish on each of the practice days, keeping in mind that, if a spot is not good, I will have a few backup spots as well. The most important thing is to fish smart and make good decisions in order to cover the most amount of lake.
It is also important not to be thrown off track by what someone else may tell you. It is important to listen but to keep on your own course. Distractions will put you off schedule and you can lose valuable time.
The usual number of practice days, about three, is adequate to learn the body of water you will be fishing. Many fishermen pre-fish weeks ahead of the tournament in order to check out the lake as well as find their way around. Three days is a good amount of practice time prior to fishing a tournament. During my pre-fishing routine, I like to give myself a time limit on each spot I want to practice. This allows me to avoid spending too much time on each spot and wasting the valuable practice time that I have. Practice days are meant to be long and need to be planned out carefully so that time is not lost.
Tournament days
Now that you have effectively planned your time up until the final days, you are ready to fish the tournament. The object of the tournament is to be confident of your decisions on where to go and what to do. You must react smartly with changing conditions and work the overall time allotted to the best of your ability.
The amount of time you have each day for the tournament needs to be planned out just as well as your practice days. You need to sum up the practice days and map out the best starting spots. You need to make sure that there is a backup plan as well. The secret of tournament fishing is to be well-prepared and map out each day so that no time is lost searching for the fish. At this point in your week you know where you should be fishing at what time each day and what the fish are biting. It is really important to consider each night where you want to start and where you want to finish. If a spot is really bad, you don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to make the fish bite. You want to move around until the best spot becomes available.
During the day you must eat and drink to keep your energy up. I make sure in order to save time that I am only eating and drinking while I run from spot to spot.
Each night before a tournament day you also want to make sure that you know where everything in your boat is and what tackle you will need to use. Every second counts in a tournament. The more casts you can make, the more chances you have to get bit.