Entry 286-2
Shaw Grigsby – How I Prepare for a Tournament
Editor’s Note: Whether you’re fishing a national tournament like Shaw Grigsby, a local tournament, a club tournament or just going fishing, you want to catch as many bass as you can for the amount of time you have to spend on the water. This week Grigsby, who’s fishing the 2009 Bassmaster Classic on Shreveport, Louisiana’s Red River, will tell us how he prepares for a tournament. You’ll be able to see from his tournament preparation ways you can improve your bass fishing and catch more bass each time you go to the lake or the river.
Part 2: Take It All
Question: How do you set up your boat for a specific tournament? Do you only carry the tackle that you think you’ll need for that particular tournament, or do you carry plenty of tackle to include a lure you may need to use?
Grigsby: I start off with a set amount of tackle that I’ll take with me in my boat. I’ll have a spinner bait box, a tool box and my tackle boxes, including a buzzbait box, a top-water bait box, a jerkbait box, a lipless-crankbait box and a small-crankbait box in which I carry my Strike King Series 1SX and Series 3. Then I have another crankbait box with Strike King Series 5 and Series 4S in it. I’ve also got a deep-crankbait box, a drop-shot box, a lizard box, a big worm box and a standard worm box. All these boxes stay in my boat year-round.
I have a lot of buddies who will cull down their tackle and only carry the lures they think will catch fish on a specific lake. The problem I have with that technique is so many times I’m out on the water, and the bass aren’t biting like I think they should bite. So, I’ll have to make an adjustment in my tackle. For instance, at Lake Falcon I was fishing, flipping and pitching tackle with heavy line and big lures. I was an 1-1/2- to 2-hours away from making a run to the weigh-in, and I needed two more bass to reach a limit. If I hadn’t had my drop-shot rod and tackle in my boat because I didn’t think I’d need it, I would have been in serious trouble. Everyone knows when you need a limit, you can downsize and almost always get it. But if you don’t have that downsized tackle, you can’t get that limit. So my drop-shot box and rod is in my boat all the time.
I carry six or seven spinning reels in my boat all the time, besides my casting reels. I’ll have lines from 6-pound test up to 20-pound test on those spinning rods. 
I’ve got my flipping sticks, my spinner-bait and crankbait rods in my boat all the time. I don’t take any of my equipment out. Often anglers will scale-down the amount of their equipment to try and make their boats lighter and faster. But what good do I do if I can go 1 to 2 miles an hour faster, and I don’t have the equipment to catch the fish? Remember that catching the bass is the most-important part of the tournament, not how fast your boat runs. So I carry my entire arsenal of tackle with me every time I go out on the water to fish.
Next: To Spool or Not to Spool
Contents:
- Part 1: Pack Right
- Part 2: Take It All
- Part 3: To Spool or Not to Spool
- Part 4: Know When to Hold Them and Know When to Fold Them
- Part 5: To Let Live or Die
