Prefishing Tournaments

[GLF]

When I use to fish Bass tournaments, I always tried to prefish a minimum of 2 days before each tournament.

How much time do you spend prefishing a salmon tournament? I am not talking league events. I am talking tournaments like the Budwieser Pro Am.

[bluedevil]

I am lucky if I get to prefish one day in advance due to my location and inconvenience of taking off work. 2 days would be ideal though.

[Steve Arend]

Now a days sometimes you don't need to prefish. With the internet you can find out most of the info that you'll need to fish just about any port with out getting the boat wet and if you have a large enough net work, you can have buddies out there prefishing for you and they can relay information back to you so by the time you hit the water you already know the "WHAT, WHEN and WHERE"

[DangerDan]

Prefishing the afternoon & evening before an event gives me the opportunity to get the gear rigged the way I need it for the next days event. (in my case that may include unwinding the coreline from the lower unit)

[SkeinMachine]

Usually the day before the tourney is adequate.

Having a reliable,local contact in that area is worth it's weight in gold.

When pre fishing,if we already know where the fish are located,we'll fish elsewhere(eliminating bad water or finding a secret mother load).

If there's a hard blow and those fish scatter overnight,it's panic time on day 1(always have a back up location-or 2).

[HitMan]

We usually always head to a new port or tournament around 4-5 days prior to the start of the tournament. We prefer to prefsh for 3-4 days in the water or port that we would possibly fish in the tournament. This also depends on how far from home the tournmanet may be. For example, for the South Haven tournament we like to arrive on Monday and fish our way South and then prefish for 4 days. Again, the Holland tournament we usually leave on Tuesday and then prefish for 3 days, only because it is closer to our home water. Basically, we like to prefish for 3-4 days before any tournament begins.