Pre-Fishing: Does It Really Have an Adverse Effect on Our Tourney-Day Chances?



According to some anglers I know, there's more bad than good to be derived from pre-fishing for a tournament. They feel that if you give a bass a sore mouth today, you don't stand much of a chance of catching that fish tomorrow--or even in two or three days. I'm among the first to admit that philosophy sounds solid; however, what I know personally, combined with what I've been reading, makes me pause and wonder just how sound that philosophy really is.

For example, some years back, when I fished Milldam Creek on a regular basis, I vividly recall one day when I know for a fact that I caught the same bass twice within a span of not more than 15 or 20 minutes. I stumbled upon a school of smaller bass that had taken up temporary residence in a submerged collection of old Christmas trees. These trees were anchored in a tight turn, near some deeper water.

I had been catching fish nearly one after the other for several minutes when I suddenly noticed a bass missing part of its dorsal fin and having a disfigured mouth. After releasing the fish, I continued tossing the same spinnerbait past the submerged trees, then working it back to the boat. It wasn't long before I again was unbuttoning that bass with the missing part of dorsal fin and disfigured mouth.

Until recently, I really hadn't thought much about that incident, other than I figured it likely had been a once-in-a-lifetime event. Then, however, I went to digging around the Internet and found other accounts in which people had encountered the same or a similar experience.

I first read about a fella who hooked a nice smallmouth on a Carolina rig one afternoon and fought the fish halfway to the boat, only to have the line break when something on the bottom cut it. Fifteen or 20 minutes later, he tied on another Carolina rig, using the same kind of lizard, and threw back to the same spot where he had set the hook on the other fish. He instantly had a bite, again set the hook, and reeled in the fish to find the hook and lizard from the previous cast buried deep in its throat.

In another case, I read about a guy who was fishing a pond with his friend when the friend caught about a 2-pounder from the other bank. The line broke before his friend got the fish in, though, so he hollered across to his friend and asked what kind of bait he was using. In a matter of minutes, the guy had tied on a crawdad like his friend was using, threw to the same spot, and almost immediately set the hook on a fish. The friend's crawdad still was in the fish's mouth as he reached in to unhook it.

There were several other accounts similar to these, but I figured you would get the general idea from this sampling that not all fish let a sore mouth stop them from chasing lures--many times, the same lure, within just minutes. I wouldn't go so far as to say that all fish would be so inclined. It might depend on just how many times the same fish has been caught and/or how old it is.

Based on these findings, I certainly can't advocate that pre-fishing diminishes your chances of having a successful tourney day. The way I see it, we all just have to decide what's best for us. For that matter, my experience more times than not has been that it doesn't really matter how many fish I put in the boat on a pre-fishing day. By tourney day, the patterns nearly always seem to have changed.