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ach year before the bass tournament season starts, I practice new techniques and tune-up the ones I’ve mastered. Whether it is electronics, skipping jigs, fishing ledges, etc., you have to practice to get better. One night before going to the lake for some practice, I decided to work on time management. Time is something that always costs me in tournaments. I’ve realized that time was not my enemy, how I managed it was. Tournament anglers have eight hours to catch five good fish by 3 p.m. I started with the basics. I broke it down by allocating one hour for travel from spot to spot and to get back for the weigh in. That left seven hours of fishing. During map study, I found seven spots I could fish for an hour each. Believe it or not, that’s a lot of time to fish one area. I decided that if I got bit at any time, I might need to adjust my time-management plan on the water, but at least I had a plan. A mistake I see many anglers make is staying too long in one area. Bass are opportunistic, and if they are ready to eat, they are going to eat. If I have not gotten bit in a certain amount of time, I will do one of several things: change baits, change colors, change locations and, many times, change speed. Focusing on time management, I have found that discipline and staying focused is a key part of the game.
My plan started out just as planned. I fished the first spot for an hour, and then ran to the next and fished it for an hour. When I got to my third spot, I started getting bites. So when the time came to leave, I simply stayed at that spot for 15 minutes longer, which meant I only had 45 minutes at one of my other areas. I was looking for a pattern. If it was determined the fish were only halfway back in the coves, I could concentrate only on those areas where I was getting bites and save time. I could now expand my fishing areas and places to fish, staying on each spot for maybe 30 minutes. Now, instead of having only seven spots to fish, I could get to 11 or 12 spots in a day and still be back on time. Time is something we cannot make more of, but it is something that can be managed. I recommend tournament anglers who struggle with time management buy a baker’s timer, set it for however long you want to be on each spot, and stick to moving each time it goes off. For me, timing my areas allows me to be more efficient all the way down to how I cover a certain area and to the rotation of baits I’m using. Stop blaming time and start managing it better. Check out pro bass angler Jay Striker’s website at www.jaystriker.com.
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