The answer to that question depends on whom you're talking to. A fella online said he feels "prefishing sometimes hinders you more than if you didn't prefish."
He went on to explain, "I have heard story after story about having sensational days prefishing, and then on tournament day...nothing! Not even a nibble from the same places where big ones were caught the day before.
"Did catching them cause them to move to deeper water? Cause them to quit eating for a while? Cause them to swim away? Who knows?"
Of course, some prefishing trips...for lack of a better way of putting it...sucks! An angler, who was asked what he does when that's the case, responded, "Don't continue doing the things you tried during the prefishing.
"Some of my best tournament finishes," he said, "have been after a tough pre-fish. I go out with a more open mind during the event and fish the conditions, not the pre-fish patterns. To me, prefishing is really mostly an excuse to spend some extra days on the water more than anything. My goal is to try and get a feel for the mood of the fish.
"There have been more tournaments lost after a stellar prefishing day than the opposite. Don't let a poor prefishing session determine your success. During any event, be it club-related, team, pro-am-, or draw, a consistent angler always adjusts."
"They were catching so many fish in practice, it was hard to believe they didn't get them during the tournament," he explained. "All I can say is: Winning practice means nothing. There's a huge difference between getting bites and hooking fish.
"Let me give you a better illustration," Scalish continued. "I was fishing my first pro-tour season with B.A.S.S., and we were on Lake Eufala. It just happened to be the last tournament of the season, and I was on the bubble to make my first Bassmaster Classic. I most assuredly found a pattern offshore...Fat-Free 7s and Carolina rigs. I was very excited."
As the practice progressed, Scalish noticed a rise in the water level, which concerned him, so he went to the bank to find some flipping fish. He found exactly six, all but one of which were in buckbrush. The other one was on an old submerged refrigerator unit.
"I didn't hook any of those fish," he said. "They were my backups. Those fish were nice-sized, as well."
After that last day of practice, Scalish went back to his room and was talking with Mark Menendez, who asked him how he was doing.
"I told him I had found some flipping fish for backup, and he asked how many I had caught. I told him none but said I had gotten six bites and believed I could go back and catch most of them."
Menendez just laughed and said Scalish should have caught them 'cause they wouldn't be there during the event.
"I just shook my head and said, 'We will see, won't we?'," noted Scalish.
On the first day of that tournament, the Ohio veteran pro went to his first Carolina-rig spot and caught one close to 4 pounds, then broke off a 7-pounder while wrestling him beside the boat. He fished that spot a while longer with no more bites and decided to go to the flipping fish, rather than pass them up on his way to the next offshore location.
"I apologized to my co-angler," said Scalish, "and explained that I had located specific fish and that he probably would not catch one there, but that if he were patient, I would take him to get a limit before the end of the day. The co-angler was OK with that plan.
"I went to the first buckbrush and flipped all over it but found no fish. I proceeded to the next and caught a big one. I advanced to the next and caught an 8-pounder. The next yielded a big zero. The one after that, though, went over 4, and when I went to the refrigerator, it gave me another one over 5 pounds. I was sitting on 23 to 25 pounds, and it was only my second stop.
"So, as promised, I took my co-angler to an offshore spot and let him fish for his five. Everything worked out, and I made the Bassmaster Classic. If I had hooked those fish in practice, I would not have caught them in the tournament.
"Not hooking fish in practice is just smart fishing," said Scalish. "I believe a lot of fish are hooked during practice as a result of ego and ignorance...not ignorance of the stupid kind but more because some anglers don't know how not to hook one. I would rather catch more in the tournament when they count and not have some ego-driven dunce plaster them when it doesn't matter," he concluded.
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