Entry 286-4
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 4: Know When to Hold Them and Know When to Fold Them
Question: In preparing for a tournament, what type of culling system or equipment do you always make sure you have on-board, knowing that 1 or 2 ounces can win or lose a tournament for you?
Grigsby: I have the best culling system in the world, and it’s really simple. It’s called Cull’em Right, a visual scale that’s made in Arizona that can be certified. You can weigh a world record on this scale, and the weight will be accurate. This scale goes to 15 pounds, so if you’re catching 18- to 20-pound bass, you’ll probably need a different system. However, in all other situations, I’ve found the Cull’em Right to be the best device ever made for making sure you keep the biggest bass in your live well, and you cull the smallest bass.
This system has seven different colors internally in its memory, and it has color-coded ropes with clips on them. You can clip a rope onto the fish’s mouth and not have to put a hole through the fish’s jaw. One of the real secrets to making sure you keep the biggest fish in your live well and that they stay alive and that you cull properly is the minute you bring a bass to the boat, you weigh it immediately and put it in the live well. What most people do is put the bass in the live well, and then when they have their 5-fish limit, they pull all 5 fish out of the live well and start weighing them to see which fish they need to cull when they catch other fish.
When you pull a fish out from a live well, it will really start flopping because it’s been getting oxygen from your live well’s aeration. You’ll have to spend more time trying to weigh the fish than you will have if you’ve weighed him when you’ve first caught him. When the bass is tired, it only takes a few seconds to put it on the scale and get its weight. 
But when that fish is rested and full of oxygen, he’ll flop and twist. So, getting a more-accurate weight quickly will be harder. So, as soon as a bass comes to the boat it will get weighed as soon as the hook comes out of its mouth.
Then I put a color-coded rope on his mouth that tells me the weight of the fish. Then when I have 6 fish in the live well, I’ve already identified which one is the lightest, and I’ll throw that bass back. Now I can look at my Cull’em Right and it will give me the exact weight and the color rope each fish has in its mouth, according to weight. I don’t waste time trying to catch bass in my live well and weighing bass.
Next: To Let Live or Die
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
