Practice?

Allen Iverson- "practice? we talkin bout practice? not the game, not the game I'd die for, what we talkin bout? practice? how silly is that?"

Im toast... I had a request via email from a follower about my practice tactics. Well, this is what I do and this is what I've done. I essentially fish as much water as possible for the first 3 or 4 days. Cover water, cover water, cover water. What you are doing is eliminating water. As far as baits, you just try everything at every spot you hit and if you catch a fish, make a note about what you did, what time it was and what the conditions were. It sucks because everytime you find something that works you move on to something else because you dont want to burn up all your fish not to mention you absolutely have to find as much stuff that works consistently as possible. It honestly feels like you are wasting practice time doing this but you are slowly figuring out the things that work, where they work and when they work.

This week has been brutal in that its extremely hot, not much stuff has worked and in not many places but at the end of today I feel like I have a solid plan to get limits each day. Today was by far my best practice day and what made it good was that I went back to all the places that I felt would produce and that had produced during the week and all those things worked again. Its different now though because the tournament is only two days away so you CANT stick a fish. I dont know if people really now how freakin hard that is.  I had blow up after blow up on buzzbait and basically had to slowly put tension on the line to try to pull the bait from the fishes mouth (you can bend over your hook as well but I didnt want to screw up a brand new warrior baits buzzbait). I had one of the biggest bass Ive ever hooked on today and I basically had to lose her on purpose...That blows but if it gives me a better shot at her thursday then I have to take that chance.

So at the end of the day, you hopefully have a bunch of puzzle pieces that you are able to assemble. I hope to god I can put it together thursday...It felt and still sort of feels like one of those dam 10,000 piece puzzles of autumn leaves. LAME!

S.T.P.