Co-Angler Tournament bag

Just starting to get into tournaments? Me too!! I have wanted to fish tournaments for years but I knew that: a) my original gear was not good enough and I had to upgrade most of it before trying to fish tournaments and b) I just didn’t have the knowledge and experience yet. Now that I have made it to that point, I feel like I am ready to jump in and have done some homework about being a “good co-angler” and have put together this list of tips I found to help me prepare for my first one.

Pack Light but Remember the Essentials – Most boaters do not want to see you carrying 10 rods and wheeling a shopping cart down to the ramp with your gear. As many others have posted around the web, the boater already has the equivalent of a small tackle store under their front deck and hopefully if he is on a pattern where you don’t have that specific lure, he might lend you one to help you out. Otherwise, try to fish to you strengths!! Also, don’t carry every rod you own on the boat for the tournament either. Most online sources suggest 4 being the best and 6 rods at most. You want to have a back up in-case your rod goes down but not too many that you can't get to what you need to easily. Remember, you are not going to have the luxury of a large front casting deck, rod lockers, and under deck storage for all of your lures, so the less clutter you have in the back the easier it is going to be for you to manage, move around, and do what you need to do. 

For a tournament, I would bring a large assortment of lures and rods with me, but those will not all make the final cut of what gets carried down to the boat with me. I have 2 boxes that stay in my tackle bag at all times, my terminal tackle (hooks, weights, etc.), and my confidence/panic box. My bag has room for two other 4700 boxes which is where I would put in whatever technique we are going to be fishing. After talking to the boater and my own off-the-water research, I would plan out and cut down my selection of what should go in the 2 open 4700 slots. From there, I would select the appropriate rods from my assortment of rods to fit the lures already chosen. By choosing rods second, it makes sure you are not packing a rod that is not necessary or loading up baits that won’t work – just because you had to have that one rod with you. When I am ready to board the boat I will be down to 2 backpacks and 3-6 or less rods.

The first backpack will have:

- Two 3700 boxes of lures for the boaters pattern

- One 3600 box of terminal tackle

- One 3705 box of confidence lures -- wouldn't you like to know what's in it ;)

- All tools necessary - including scale, measuring board, cull beam, & cull system

- Couple bags of plastics in the water bottle pouch. 

Second backpack:

- Raingear

- Snacks

- Water

- T. Paper

- Ziplocs

- Life Vest

- Sunblock

- Sunglasses

Other Essentials:

- FISHING LICENSE(S) -- if you are on a body of water that covers multiple states, get a license for all states to be safe. last thing you want is to not be able to fish because the boater chose a spot on the side you didn't have your license for.

- camera

- extra clothes in the car

- money for the boater -- its their boat & trailer and they foot all the gas and maintenance so the least you can do is help out with some cash.

My list of items may vary to what you feel you need to be confident but this is what I feel will streamline my tackle organization and will give me the best chances from the back deck as I enter the tournament world. Until next time, best of luck on the water!! 

Organization for it all

For a first posting, this is a fairly large topic to tackle so here it goes ...

One thing every fisherman can relate to is having too much tackle (even though we feel like its never enough). The key to it all is proper management and organization making it is easy to find what you need/want for your next trip and even more importantly when you are already out on the water. Not having a house yet, I can't easily set up a pegboard in the basement or garage for all my spare lures and bags of plastics, so I have to rely on my 3 tackle boxes and other storage methods to hold everything, for now. I have 3 tackle boxes, 2 that are full of lures and 1 with 2 full boxes and a little bit of open real estate for 2 3700 boxes i can swap in and out (more on that in the next posting); plus my wife's 2 tackle bags but that's another topic entirely. My first box is a big tackle bag holding 8 standard 3700 boxes, some smaller boxes, plus room for other stuff in the side pouches. Second box is my pond box which is like a mini version of the first one but only has 3 small boxes plus room for hooks weights & some plastics and to make it all fit I cut out things that are not feasible to fish from shore. Third box is set up with a 3620 box holding all my terminal tackle and a 3700 confidence box of baits to fish year round in IL. The rest of my extra lures and plastics had to find a way to be stored in as small of a space as possible while still being quickly accessible. But not everything fits into those three boxes, so where does the rest of it go?

**TIP #1 Invest in additional storage **

For me, investing in a few extra 3700 plano boxes to hold additional copies of lures to replenish my stock in my tackle bags was perfect. Then to store those neatly, I found a couple basic plastic crates from either target or walmart for about $5. Next organization was for all my bags of plastics. I broke them down into styles and put them into gallon ziplocs labeled via sharpie and all of those rest inside a Plano 7080 storage box.

** TIP #2 Label makers are your best friend! **

All of my plano boxes in my tackle bags and in the storage crates have labels with their contents on whatever side will be visible. Inside my crankbait box, I also use the labeler to mark how deep each crank runs. In my Jig box, it tells me how heavy each jig is. Speeding up the process of selection and allowing me to get fishing faster. The extra 4700 boxes of lures also have their own labels telling me exactly what is in each one.

** TIP #3 Make a spreadsheet of your rods **

It may not seem like a great organization strategy but knowing the rod information of what each rod has on it for line and your intended techniques for that rod will help you to quickly pick out what rods to bring for a trip or which ones need maintenance.

My spreadsheet includes Rod name / Length & Action / Type / Reel name / Gear Ratio / Line type / Line name / Line Poundage / Rod Technique

** TIP #4 Do your off the water homework!! **

This step will help you in so many ways. Do your background reading about a particular body of water. Look at articles about productive lures, look at old tournament reports, check DNR stocking reports, and obviously lake maps (multiple if you can find them). These will tell you what might be the dominant technique or at least a staple technique that you bring with you for a given season. If you are a tournament fisherman, it will tell you the required weights to win on that body of water, were they targeting largemouths, smallmouths, or spots? Looking for multiple lake maps may offer different information for the body of water. One map might not show that tiny stump field in the middle of the big flat while another one does. Make a folder for your information from each lake and start a log of your trips there. Easiest way to log your trips, I found, is to print out the weather report for your area, and use the backside of that page to make your lake notes. Then you have the air temp, humidity, barometric pressures, cloudiness and all your notes of what you tried and what worked or didn’t. If you are not on a boat to that has electronics that measure surface temp, I use a simple IR temperature gauge to take a reading of the surface temps. This will allow you to see what lures/presentations worked on any given day for the conditions (water, air, etc.) and better decide what lures to bring with you to the lake or river to be successful. All details that will help you to streamline your fishing tackle and choose better locations on the water.

Well, I hope those are a good jumping off point to get you started with organizing your tackle. Not everything I do is going to work for every angler, and I'm sure there are other tips and tricks that others use. I will get into more about my gear, setups, tackle, and other tips in the future postings. Until next time, best of luck on the water!! 

New blog .. My fishing journey and tricks learned along the way.

Day 1 of my new fishing blog. I plan to use this for sharing my experiences while fishing and eventually joining club tournaments. I will also share tips of things I learn along the way.