Learning new techniques and becoming confident with them does not happen overnight. You can’t expect to simply try something new and gain immediate results. Learning where to employ it, how to employ it, what changes to make, when to change up and why that change worked or didn’t work, are all things that can only be learnt from time on the water and time using the new technique. Asking yourself these simple questions and learning from them will help put more fish in the boat. TOURNAMENT TIME Tournament fishing is an arena that helps speed up the learning process, and an environment that can help you evolve as an angler much faster that purely social fishing. During tournament fishing hours, there is no hiding what is working and everything is fully visible for people to learn from each other. Information is more readily available with people willing to share and discuss their different ideas, thoughts and strategies. The pressures of competition, and the transparency of competition techniques, tackle and results are important factoors with benefits that can’t be replicated anywhere else. STAYING AHEAD While there is no doubt,
abt
Tournament Angler Guide
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Trying something out of the box when it comes to lure selection can be the trigger to turn things on. watching and learning from others is a successful way to gain more versatility in your fishing, it will always pay to lead from the front. New techniques have to come from somewhere and your own personal experimentation can be as good a start as any to discover new things. I find myself constantly researching through both foreign and local fishing resources in search of
new techniques and tackle to try. Magazines, websites, catalogues, and videos are all sources of new ideas and are regularly evolving providers of food for thought. While not everything you find or try will work, it will help keep you at the forefront of anything new, and situate you that one step ahead of the pack. It is the little things that make the difference come
competition day. Fishing, like many things, revolves around cycles and patterns. Dam levels fluctuate, seasons return and weather changes, which result in a variation of fish moods. The only thing certain is that history repeats and past conditions will reoccur. So it is very important for an angler to remember what techniques worked under a specific set of
conditions. These conditions may change by the hour, by the day or by the year; one thing is for sure they will never only occur once. While replicating these techniques, it is not a certainty that they will prove successful, but more often than not, it is a fast way to gain results. SWITCH IT UP Instant results are not always found when previous
techniques are replicated; sometimes it pays to vary your approach. These variations do not always need to be major changes, but more of a subtle adjustment. A good example of this is when I reach for my ever-reliable, tournamentwinning box of jerkbaits. I will always start with three twitches (pause, two twitch, pause technique) repeating this throughout the retrieve. While more often than not this method will work, sometimes a slight adjustment will result in even more bites. This may be to a constant twitching retrieve, slow roll or a violent erratic rod twitch. Applying this theory to other successful lures will work and constant experimenting with retrieve methods will result in more fish. Fishing is evolving faster than ever before, information is more readily available and easier to find. Most tournament angler’s arsenal these days is far broader than a simple gold Bomber. Anglers must learn from the past, look at the present and look to the future. Accumulating a complete repertoire of techniques will set you apart from the rest of the field, becoming a jack-of-all-trades, rather than a master of one is the key to consistent tournament angling success.
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