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There has been some pretty interesting, sometimes heated debates in the Tournament section of this website, and I feel that since the post recently has kind of winded down a little, I'd like to bring to attention an issue that kept repeating itself in that long discussion, but was set to the side because it would have gotten the thread off track.

So I'd like to hear from you guys how you feel about spots, pre-fishing, and educating fish.  It seems like there's some wildly varying opinions on these subjects, and I wonder if there's any consensus.

-Spots: Do you believe the top guys have secret spots? If they don't, then why is secrecy so profound when everyone is basically fishing the same stuff?  Is there some sort of "upper class" feeling that guys have that have been around for a while, where they feel like the new guys need to earn their keep with blood, sweat, and tears in order to learn the spots everyone fishes?  If there isn't, then why is Washington State so against Pro-Am tournaments (and thus giving up their "spots")?  Why are you so secretive with your spots?  Do you honestly feel like no one knows your spot?

-Pre-Fishing: Do you believe fishing for your fish (on your spots) a week prior can significantly educate your fish to the point where it ruins your chances the next weekend?  What are your methods for pre-fishing, particularly pre-fishing that is a week in advance?  How often do you think fish re-locate or totally change after a week?

Everyone's opinion matters on the above questions, and I feel we're going to see a lot of disagreement, so hopefully it's interesting.

Here my analysis on the two subjects:

-Spots: I do not believe, for the most part, that the top guys have secret spots.  I have fished too long and I see oftentimes where guys are fishing, and it's funny but we're all fishing the same stuff.  With that, I do believe the top guys are very good at finding which spot is on during pre-fish, and even better at adjusting a week later at the tournament.  I believe secrecy is a must during pre-fish, because if you find fish, obviously you don't want everyone knowing.  But the spot itself, guys seem to think it's secret, but 99% of the time it isn't.  Now, I'm not saying NEVER.  I do think guys do, albeit rarely, find a hidden jewel.  In general, though, I think the top guys just fish the same spots as everyone else, they just fish differently, and their timing and decisions are impeccable.

Take, for example, Don Hogue.  Normally I would question a guy's manhood if he came to a championship tournament with one rod on the deck, and it was a 6" PINK fluke.  :)    However, when he uses that pink fluke to win boats, and almost everyone knows exactly where he fishes, that's pretty amazing.  I have tried to duplicate what Don Hogue does and I cannot.  I know exactly where he fishes and what he uses, and I've tried understand what he is doing that's so special, but I gave up....It was a good moment of learning for me, to discover that it's best that we each fish to our own strengths, and that's where we do best.  The point is Don Hogue fishes the same spots as most but he is a better fisherman than most guys.  Period.

-Pre-Fishing: I am of the opinion that it's probably not a great thing to hammer your water during pre-fish, even if it's a week away.  However, I am definitely not convinced it's a bad thing, either, especially if you're left with no option (such as fishing a tournament on that same body of water during pre-fish).  There's scientific proof that fish travel great distances to go "home."  Also, there's scientific proof fish are caught multiple times.  And, more often than not, at least in my experience, fish DRASTICALLY change during a week-long period......On that note, if the pre-fishing was no-off limits, my pre-fishing strategy would be dramatically different....But a week....Really?  I again provide the example of the lakes, tons of tournaments, and thousands of bass fisherman in Alabama who are pounding every square inch of water every week.  In the end, most of the time the best fisherman wins, and also most of the time it's not because he found a secret spot a week ago during pre-fish.  It's because he's a better fisherman, period.

On the pro and elite levels, I think the rules change, and my opinions would vary slightly on this subject of pre-fishing and spots.  The reason is because in the Elites, everyone competing is on a similar skill level, and different factors come into play as to why one guy wins and the other doesn't.

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Good topic Ben.

Spots, I agree that on the lakes we all fish, there are few secret spots. The secrecy doesn't last, someone will see you fishing somewhere and come visit after you have left ,its inevitable.  What I do believe about spots and whats allows certain anglers to maximize their catch in those spots is what is typically described as the "spot on the spot". I think its really a combination of the right presentation in a more precise area. 

As an example I fished a qualifier on the Lower Columbia years  ago. Took my boater to a spot I knew well.  We had visitors, won't mention their slimy names, but they told us after the weigh in they fished the spot prior to us  and caught nothing.  The spot on spot was a 1 foot drop on a current break on an out going tide.  You could throw at the rock pile all day and unless you hit it properly and fished it properly, you 'd come home empty, like the Karma kid that was trying to crowd us.

About Instincts. I believe the best anglers possess better more refined instincts. Instincts are really learned behaviors and an awareness of what is going on around them, developed from experiences.  Veteran Police officer have some of the best instincts when around the criminal kind..... why because they are studied, experienced and their own survival instinct pushes their refinement.

Pre-fishing - It can build belief, confidence and refine or fine tune needed skills for the day of.  With that said, I try to only stick one fish here or there. I focus on the approach more than the bait. (figuring them out ...what should they be doing and why.)  Getting married to a bait is usually a recipe for disaster when its a week out.   Its why I mentioned Instincts earlier, because if one thinks that they have it dialed just cause they caught them prefishing... well they haven't fished enough. Humbling is just around the corner.  So an angler with good instincts uses the prefish, but will adapt or make those on  water changes necessary to get it done.

My 2cents.

I had a pretty long post about this topic, but I deleted it because the topic needs narrowing down. 

I think you need to define "secret spots".   To me, a secret spot could mean a spot that nobody has ever fished except you.  I think that is extremely rare, with the exception of off shore subtle spots that are made up of deep weeds, or hard bottom changes that aren't obvious rocks, or small rock spots the size of your kitchen table. 

In terms of tournament success, I think a secret spot could be defined as a small area or spot where no other competitors are going to fish that day.   In that respect, I think there are many "secret spots".  I certainly think tournament success is a combination of executing well on "community Holes", as well as taking advantage of some hard earned "secret spots".  A book could be written here...and I'm sure have been. 

What I do know is that people's definitions of Community spots vary wildly.   I given some guys flack for posting up pictures of big bass in obvious community spots, with the dates the fish was caught.   The response I received was that "its a community spot".  Well yeah, but the community who knows when the biggest fish are there, and exactly where the sweet spot is, just grew a whole bunch and some of them like to stuff fish in buckets.

This person seemed to think that all communities are the same size, and that no matter how many Californians move on up to Bend Oregon, the community is going to stay the same size forever.   Sorry, but that isn't the case.  The communities in Montana aren't on blogs in California telling everyone to sell their houses in Van Nuys, only to retire in Bozeman and act like a pretentious asshole.  They want the community to stay somewhat confined to those who have worked hard to find the community...  


My point is that even a lesser known "community" spot, might only have 4-5 teams that are in the community.  If 3 of those teams head to the other end of the lake that day, the community spot all of a sudden turns into a secret spot in which 2 boats split the fish.  If 1 of those 2 boats know the sweet spot better, or the timing is better, or they position the boat better, then it might as well be a secret.

As for Pre-fishing and educating fish...   This is where time on a body of water really shines.  Sticking fish on a "big fish spot" is just stupid.  There's no way that can help you.  That said, sometimes, particularly if you have little experience on a body of water, you had better figure out what size fish are down there because fishing for losing fish isn't going to get it done.  If you can lift a fish without sticking it, then great, but sometimes water clarity doesn't allow that.

I stuck a ton of fish in a divisional tournament a day before the event.   The guys who finished 1 and 2 in the state fished those same exact spots and caught a bunch of fish. I saw it first hand.  It hurt me mentally because I would have never believed that those spots would still be key, but there is always more fish there that move up and back and up again.  Sticking a few fish in practice I believe has more mental impact on you than any true detriment to your final results.  That doesn't mean I'm throwing caution into the wind...

Easy topic no such thing as secret spots, just lesser known spots, prefishing time and fish management is different for everyone. I do think prefish needs to be regulated somehow to even the playing field for everyone if this means 2 week off limits beside certain specified days I am all for it but needs to be regulated so that Homers and people with flexible work schedules don't have such a great advantage. I say 2 to 3 days before or week before the tourney. I don't like day before a 1 day tournament multiple day tournament no problem, but 1 day tournament during the spawn season is an unfair advantage against anyone who is forced to work the Friday before the event.

Prefish should be used to get a feel for the water and fish, fish swim, good prefish (catching a 20 pounds) does not equate to good tournament finishes and doesn't equate to knowing what the fish will be doing on tournament day it just gives you a starting spot to put together the pieces.

Tournaments especially multi day events are won through mental toughness, efficiency, and good decision making. Has no direct correlation to hammering them in prefish especially when prefish was a week prior to the event.

Jake/Hobbs,

So are you both saying that catching fish off of a spot/area 1 week before a tournament doesn't really have an effect on anything (in regards to tournament performance the next week), and that it's probably more mental than anything else?

Furthermore, are you basically saying that pre-fishing one week before the actual tournament, for the most part, is meaningless beyond getting general ideas and a possible starting point?

Your story about me and the pink fluke is an over-simplification of what happened and what typically happens on a given day.  For the record, I'm not better than others and certainly not better PERIOD! I know this because I've taken people out with very limited experience and skills and have seen them have great success.  I did better than others because I had better knowledge about things than others - there was no PERIOD.  While you may feel you know where other people are fishing, you may not know what they are fishing and why.  You may not know that their goal is to catch 1 good fish off of a 5' dia. spot.  Spots are everything to fishing.  The same as they are to hunting.  If I'm worried about using the same shotgun with the same load of shot that someone else is using and hunting the same general location as them, but I failed to realize that those birds used this little spot at this time of day and that little spot and that time of day or under these conditions and that once somebody has already hunted it, it's not going to be as productive.  Or that the farmer over the ridge just did something to his fields that changes everything about my spots.  There is a hundred different things to consider and they all change everyday.  So while maybe "secret" is not the right term, there are always spots we don't know about that somebody else does but the rate of change makes those spots dynamic rather than a collection of waypoints.  So I can never go back to something and try to duplicate things because 90% of it is 50% different.

 

Now, prefish.  I try to look for areas or spots that I can manage and that I don't think others will fish.  It doesn't always work out, but that is my goal.  Any time I/we have had a successful day on the water, it has happened when we were fishing something others weren't. So you have to be smart about how you use your prefish.  I suspect most people believe there is an fixed number of places to catch tournament winning fish off of and they treat it like an Easter egg hunt.  You hear lots of talk over boat numbers, boat draws.  I would prefer to be last boat out every time and get that extra 30 minutes of fishing.  Tournaments I/we've done well is because we have had things that were very specific all to ourselves.  When I've tried to share or boat race somebody to something, I never ends up good.  So I spend prefish planning out all of that.   There is a certain amount of anticipation that goes into that (fishing were they are going to be instead of where they were at) but catching fish isn't hard.  It's finding them and anticipating how they will react to their environment.  Just like hunting.  Prefish is to tournaments as scouting is to hunting.  

Don, if I don't make it a little dramatic, then it isn't as fun to read!  LOL!

Obviously if we were to look at the details, for sure you had to be doing some very specific things/fishing very specific "spots" and using specific techniques, to win boats with the pink fluke....But I do know in general how you fish, because you're a fairly open upstanding guy, as is your dad.

Okay...Well if spots are everything, then logically the top guys must be always fishing the right spots. How do they make that determination on such a consistent basis when pre-fishing is 1 week out (and fish change so much in that week)?

Your killing me with the "pink fluke" bit.  For the record, it was "flesh red" and it accounted for 1 fish on the morning of day 1 (albeit a 5 pounder).  

"How do they make that determination on such a consistent basis when pre-fishing is 1 week out (and fish change so much in that week)?"

How do you do it bird hunting?

 

LOL!!!!

I think bird hunting is much less dynamic than fishing, because 1/4 of the work is accomplished through a good dog, mostly accomplished through training and experience, not genetics.  The other 1/4 is bird knowledge/scouting, 1/4 shooting ability, and probably 1/4 physical fitness and determination.

Birds spend most of their lives in the same area, as do bass, but I don't really "look" for birds, just cover and food.  My dog finds birds.  You could say electronics is your "dog," but a dog is much more concrete and easy to read than electronics, and more reliable.  Furthermore, it's difficult sometimes to use electronics when locating fish in shallow water, say 1-10 feet, you're more just locating structure at those depths....When I sight fish, that's a form of hunting I suppose.....

I just think fish are so much more dynamic than pheasants or quail.  With birds, I just go find corn, Russian olive trees, and cover like tall grass or tules, and BAM.  Yes, if I get permission to hunt private land it helps a lot because spots in hunting are much more fickle to pressure than fishing, in my opinion anyway.

There's definite parallels, for sure.  Fishing is so much more dynamic, though. 

Ben,

The minute you brought up dog training as only 1/4 of hunting is the minute you suggested that only 25% of hunting has had hundreds of bible sized text books written about it, and they all conflict each other. lol.  Dog training is pretty dynamic itself.  I haven't even mentioned how to handle a trained dog, or the dvd collections, you-tube instruction, and endless theories affiliated with the whole picture.

Do you know how many articles, text books, and seminars have been done on the other 75% you suggested in shooting technique, bird behavior, and physical/mental conditioning?

Be careful to oversimplify everything.   I can assure you that you won't have any REAL success if you just go out, find some tules, corn, russian olives and grass.   There's about 5 billion variables you are missing....starting with life's most basic need, water. 

Dog positioning. Wind direction.  If the cover has multiple things such as water, tulles, and russian olives all mixed together in one spot?  What type of gun.  What type of shot? What method to hunt a giant field of CRP grass compared to how you'd hunt a skinny draw?  What choke sizes are best for the ranges you expect.  early season pheasants, or late season? How fast do you walk? Too fast, as to walk by a bird?  Too slow, so they get up ahead of you? How thorough do you hunt.  What are the birds telling you?  Flighty?  Holding super tight?  Is getting in that russian olive tree worth it?  Quail are all spread out and appear to have been hunted, how hard will it be to get them out of the cover?   Should your dog have foot protection for russian olive spines.  Did you remember your pliers to remove those god for saken spines.  What kind of dog is best here?  Will you need a lab to crush brush, or retreive a pheasant from an icy river, or will your gsp be required to hunt a sea of wheat?  How much water do you pack?  What kind of boots do you have given the cold temps? What kind of socks did you wear?  Are you hunting a steel only area?  How does that impact your range or shot size?  Public pressured birds?  How many chances do you think you'll get at a pheasant today, and how does that dictate your shot selection?  If a quail jumps up near a likely pheasant patch, will you kill the quail, or hold off to see if big Red is in town? How old is the snow?  Is it crunchy giving away your position?  Is it fresh snow indicating that tracks mean a recent bird was just here, or running in front of you?  How can you hunt the area so that you are hunting fresh ground on the way back to the truck rather than retracing footsteps?

Ben....I could go on and on, and these are very real considerations.   Considerations that go through an experienced and successful hunters mind in SECONDS.

If you wrote down the decision making tree of the best fisherman on the planet... you won't find anything secret or mind blowing.    Their decision making tree will have every single thing yours does, but it will have a bunch of other things on it that are so simple you can't understand why you didn't think of it.  You'll note that the best do all the common things just a little tiny bit better than others do to the point of barely being noticeable.

In 2008 a pro golfer named Paul Goydos...who you've probably never heard of, but has made millions on the PGA tour was interviewed by Golf Magazine during the height of Tiger Woods dominance...

Golf Magazine:  What separates Tiger from other players? Is he that much better?


Paul Goydos:   The difference between Tiger Woods and me is not this huge chasm. It's that he's a little bit better at a million small things that you can't see, that eat away at you. It's like termites.

Jake,

Good stuff!

I don't brag much, but there's only 1 guy I personally know who has shot more pheasant than I, and I know of no dogs that have even come close to pointing the number of birds my dog has pointed/tracked down (WILD birds)....Gosh I hate boasting...But I have hunted with a lot of guys and a lot of different dogs.

Anyways, maybe that's just it.  I process those things out hunting without even thinking about it.  They come natural.....It took me years to get good at fishing.  Many, many years...I was the furthest from natural, although it was a born-love that's been in me since I was probably 4.

I guess hunting and dogs came natural to me.  I don't think about it much, I just do it, and have lots of success.  Like you said, those tons of small things just click with me out hunting.

My dog Red is old now, almost 13.  He's pretty lame anymore.  Gone are the days/years when we'd shoot over 200 chukkar, quail, pheasant (WILD), huns, and grouse.  He barely can go 4 hours.  But every year we had those kinds of years up until he was probably 10.

I don't practice shooting much anymore, and I don't keep my gear up, and I don't work with my dog much.....And it reminds me of some guys who zoomed through bass fishing, and became freakin' stud fisherman, then just kind of let it go, or their passion and intensity waned.  Guys like Jason Allred, Mark Shugdinis, Chris Lambert....All natural high quality fisherman, who with even a tiny bit of refining became among the best around.

Ben, 

I think your topic/questions are very good ones.  I just have a hard time answering in the confines of a message board.  

While Ron (the natural) thinks this is an easy topic, I think it's pretty tough and my answers would be along the lines of Jake's on all the considerations that go into a bird hunt.  At least I got you guys talking about working dogs and hunting birds - something I miss a bunch!

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