Spring Prep

Prepping for a tournament is not a simple thing.  Since we have a lot of hard water for most of the winter the boat often can sit for several months without seeing the light of day.  So when the time comes to get out on the water there are a lot of things to check. 

     Aside from the usual checks, tires, bearings, straps, cleaning, the item to address this year is the Lowrance graph/gps on the dash.  The gps is not working.  For most of our lakes this is not a problem, but the first tournament of the year for 2011 is at the massive and stump filled Truman Lake, MO.  Knowing boat lanes and which way to turn on an unfamiliar lake is very important and a working gps is very useful.  The problem could come from two sources, the unit, or the wiring.  To narrow down the possibilities I travelled to a friend’s house, who happened to have the same graph, with the boat in tow.  Taking my graph and putting it on his boat resulted in a gps that worked, taking his graph and putting it on my boat resulted in a gps that did not work.  The conclusion is that the gps antenna has gone bad.



One bag has 4-6" worms, the other 7-10."
Many bags can go into a master pack.



     The second springtime chore is organization.  I have experimented with several ways of organizing tackle, from trying to get everything into plastic boxes, to a mix of plastic trays and tackle bags.  The new plan is to leave as much plastic in the original package as possible, divide the types of soft plastic into quart size baggies, and then putting the baggies into tackle storage packs.  This large master bag has small baggies of finesse, drop-shot, large and small curl-tail worms, etc.



Rubber bands keep hooks from tangling.



   I once used hook covers on my crank bait selection so that they did not get too tangled up in the trays, but using hook covers takes up more space.  This year I have started to use rubber bands to tie the hooks up and make it easier to keep the baits from getting tangled while allowing me to store more lures in one box.  The rubber bands will sometimes come off, and will eventually dry, crack and break, but not that many break each year.

     The best new system I started last year was using small zip top baggies to store weights, jig heads and various small terminal tackle.  I used to use a small tray with each size weight in a single slot.  But they would jump slots and get mixed up.  

 At Michael’s hobby store I got a hundred small baggies for a $1.00.  Using these I divided all my weights by size; 1/8, ¼, ½, etc.  And then by style; bullet weights, tungsten weights, and screw-lock weights.  Using a sharpie write on each baggie the size of weight.  You will always know when you are running low and need to get more weights.  This also works for jig heads, drop-shot weights, split rings, etc.  Any small terminal tackle item. 

FISH ON!