Like every other serious tournament angler, Elite Series pro Clark Reehm carries a boatload of essential equipment, including spare parts, tools, a first aid kit and enough tackle to fill most of your local tackle stores. If you ask him what the most important piece of emergency equipment is, his answer might surprise you.

“A heavy duty weigh-in bag is the item that most people leave out when outfitting their tournament boat” state Reehm. A weigh-in bag serves many purposes for a tournament angler. Besides its intended use, it can be used for comfort, fish care, and emergencies.

Comfort

Almost anyone who’s ever been in a boat has sat down on wet carpet at one point or another. Since it is waterproof, a weigh-in bag makes an excellent seat or carpet cover either early in the morning or after that rain shower passes through. It is also an easy, quick mat if you have to work under the console of your boat or change a tire on the way to the lake.

Fish Care

If you are catching fish deep and need to fizz them, it’s difficult to do inside of the livewell, especially if the lids have small openings. With a wide bag, you can put the fish in some water and fizz them outside of the livewell, separate from the other fish. This also eliminates the chance of a fish jumping out of the livewell while you are working on another fish.

If you are fishing a pro-am event where you don’t have use of both livewells, you can also use the bag for culling purposes. This gives you somewhere to put the fish while you are weighing them other than throwing them on the carpet and damaging their slime coat. 

Emergency Uses

If you fish enough tournaments, regardless of which products you use, breakdowns are going to happen. “If you’ve broken down and I stop to pick you up, you better have your stuff ready to go,” says Reehm. This includes having your fish in a bag that you can snatch out of the livewell and transfer to his boat all together. There simply isn’t time to transfer the fish one at a time.

Reehm’s number one use for his weigh-in bag is for failures in the livewell systems themselves. If a pump goes out, you can put a bunch of water into your livewells with a weigh-in bag instead of using a plastic container or tacklebox. Or if you run down the lake and see that the livewells have drained down during the run, you can refill them quickly using the bag rather than the pumps.

So, if you are an Elite angler, the guy who fishes the Tuesday night tournament at your local lake or somewhere in between, a heavy duty weigh-in bag is a must-have piece of boat equipment.

Sitting at home one evening contemplating whether or not to go down into the basement into my tackle room, or as my wife calls it “a mini Bass Pro Shops” to work on tackle management and my annual cleaning of the reels. However, before heading down I decided to check my e-mails. I received an e-mail from a young angler who has some experience fishing local club events and does relatively well in them but wants to make the step to the bigger larger tournament circuits. I get asked this question at shows regularly and I thought that I would write about making the jump to the larger circuits and what are some of the other questions that I’m asked when answering the original question.

The first question during this conversation usually goes something like this “I have a small boat, do I need a bigger boat to fish the bigger circuits?” Well, the answer to that is it depends on what circuits you are doing. If you are fishing a circuit like the BASS Opens or the FLW Berkley Series which are multiple day events on much larger bodies of water like Lake Erie, Lake Champlain, Potomac River, Santee Cooper Reservoir, the list goes on and on. These bodies of water are large where you can end up going 10, 20 plus miles to your fishing spot to get away from the traffic. Meaning with the larger events, the fields are larger. Anywhere from 150 to 200 boat fields and along with these larger bodies of water come rougher conditions. Unlike the weekend warriors, tournament anglers do not have the luxury of only fishing in nice, calm sunny days. You could be out fishing on Lake Erie or Lake Champlain with 4 to 6 foot waves. So the quickest answer is yes you will need to a larger boat. 19 to 21 foot boats with 200 plus horsepower motors become the norm for fishing these events.

The other thing that anglers do not factor in when contemplating making the move up is the increase in financial outlay as well as time away from home. These events are not all within an hour from your home. Therefore, traveling expenses will increase. Lodging/accommodations, fuel for the boat and truck will increase or be incurred as you are now further away from home. Which is something else to factor in during your decision process on whether or not to make the jump to the larger event circuits?

I digressed a little here. However, the above is all true but the one thing that I wanted to talk about is the buying of excessive tackle. I have seen in the past and it happens a lot is anglers spending a pile of money on tackle that is usually totally unnecessary. Having been a tackle store owner in the past I have seen anglers that want to fish the larger team events go and spend a lot of money on tackle because they think that is what they need to do. The key for any angler is to perfect a technique before moving onto another one. What I like to do is when I am out on the water I will bring specific bait with me and I will force myself to only use that particular type of bait the entire day. For example, pitching/flipping, I will bring only my flipping stick and nothing but jigs with me. I will go and flip and pitch all day long so that I can become familiar with what a jig does once it’s in the water. As well what it feels like when I get a strike and try to imagine what the jig is doing in the water every time that I move it. Then and only then once I have figured out what the jig is doing and have a firm understanding will I try a different technique, say drop shotting or throw a swimbait.

So to summarize, if you are going purchase new tackle make sure you become familiar with it’s application and effectiveness before going out and spending a pile of money on bait and/or technique that you are not comfortable or confident in throwing.

The boater/non-boater format is a good way for someone to get introduced to the sport of bass tournaments without making the financial obligations it takes to fish on a tournament circuit. A non-boater doesn’t have to spend the $50,000 + on a fancy bass boat and the cost of running one of those boats for a summer. The other advantage is that you don’t have to worry about where to fish or how to find fish. This is all taken care of by the boater….hopefully. The non-boater fishes from the back of the boat and really doesn’t have any input on where to fish. The only thing that the non-boater has to do is meet his boater partner at the launch at an agreeable time in the morning and then spend the rest of the day trying to catch fish and also learn as much as possible from his partner. Each of them will try and catch their own fish to weigh in at the end of the day.

The question that most non-boaters have is; what do I bring??? You will not be able to bring everything that you own. You have to limit yourself. The day before the tournament when you and your partner meet for the first time, this is a good time to ask him/her what type of fishing that you are going to be doing the next day. If your partner (boater) says that you will be fishing in shallow water flipping and pitching stumps and lily pads all day. Don’t bring your ultra light gear with you. Chances are that you will not have a very good day out there. Although this first conversation is usually very brief you want to get as much information from your partner as you possibly can. Some of the key questions to ask are: do we have a long boat ride before you get to his fishing hole?? Are we fishing deep or shallow, are we power fishing or finesse fishing for most of the day? These questions will determine what you bring with you the next day.

A good start is with the amount of rods that you should bring. That amount is usually no more than 6 rods. Why 6 rods?? It’s not a rule that you have to bring 6 it’s just that you have to be prepared for anything that can happen out there. In case one of your reels break down, or you snap a rod tip you will have another that you can use. Also if you are using multiple baits during the day, you don’t have to keep tying and retying different baits, you can just grab another rod and continue fishing. So now that you have your rods selected and your reels are fully spooled you are ready to decide what tackle to bring.

Again here is a place where you have to limit the amount that you bring on the boat. You don’t want to bring everything because you have to hold onto this bag(s) at your feet while you are moving from spot to spot. Once again the brief conversation that you had with your partner the day/evening before will help you determine what type of tackle to bring with you for the next days fishing. There are some places where you can limit what you bring. A perfect example is don’t bring every single colour of plastics that you have. Don’t’ bring every colour of flipping jig you have. You should limit yourself to a maximum of 2 tackle bags. The boater doesn’t want to have an extra 200 lbs just because you need to bring all of your tackle with you. In some cases if you are onto fish and you run out of the particular colour that the fish seem to be biting on the boater (if you ask nicely) might lend you that colour to finish off the days fish. You have to remember your partner’s boat is usually a floating tackle shop. He/she probably has the colour that you have just run out of. Ask if he/she has that bait, you may be surprised how much they will try and help you out.

Now that you have your rods and tackle bag(s) packed and ready to go, you have to make sure that you bring the other essentials with you. You have to be prepared for everything and anything that can happen out there. Trust me if something can go wrong it will happen when you are out on the water. You will not be able to come back to shore because you forgot something. Here is a list of other important items to bring with you so that you can have the most enjoyable day possible fishing. You want to make sure that you bring some drinks and/or food, a rain suit, your life jacket, sunscreen, fishing glasses, perhaps shorts or pants depending on the weather conditions for the day.

Other things to consider when you decide what to bring is how long of a run do you have to make to get to and from your fishing hole. This will also have an impact on the amount of things that you bring with you. If you have a 30 minute boat ride 1 way, you want to be able to sit comfortably in the seat and not have to worry about your gear. Also if the weather conditions are nice then the ride is not too bad but what happens if it’s windy and raining. Now that 30 minute boat ride in nice weather as turned into an hour and 30 minute ride. A hard back pounding ride that you have to endure until you reach your spot. This kind of ride and tire you out before you even pick up a fishing rod. Sometimes the boater (if you ask nicely) allow you to store your rods in his rod locker or strap down on the front deck so that would be 1 thing that you don’t have to hold on to for the ride. Your neck muscles can get tired very quickly when you trying to brace yourself against the elements.

You want to make your fishing enjoyable and you don’t want to let the little things spoil your day. This article is based on my experiences that I had while fishing a Citgo Bassmaster Tour event in March of 2004 in Manning South Carolina on the Santee Cooper Reservoir. You want to bring everything that you need when you go out fishing because when we fish from our own boats we know that if we need a particular bait that we probably have it in a storage compartment somewhere. When fishing as a co-angler/non-boater you do not have that luxury of having everything you need at your fingertips. So if plan carefully and pack wisely you should have a good day on the water. You never know, you may just come home with a cheque.

By Peter Larmand