Have to tournaments coming up in the late winter early spring on lakes I haven�t bass fished before. Would I be equating time fishing now and hit a closer lake or drive twice as far to familiarize myself with the lakes?

No question I would drive the distance to get familiar with the lake then go back right before the tournament and pick it apart from what I learned the first trip.

if anything it would be good just to idle around and watch the graph. Just seeing the lake without fishing helps a ton

If you are serious about preparing for tournaments on a lake and wish to draw a check; then you must turn your attention toward that body of water. It always took me a full year to do all this without any help.
It takes many trips and many hours on the water to make this happen. Here are just a few things that you will need to prepare for learning the lake inside and out.
- Keep up with the water levels. Look at the levels from past years during the months that you wish to fish and that still doesn't mean that it will happen; but it is a starting place to give you an idea about how far back you will need to go to find fish. Look at the history of how fast your lake can fall during bad times if they start pulling water.
- Learn to use Satellite Views. Going back in time to low water conditions and also at times of high water.
- Fish with people that are better than you are and have experience on that lake to shorten the learning curve.
- Become as effective as possible with you depth finder equipment.
- Study Maps and start with your paper map. Get all spots that you you wish to fish well marked on your depth finder once your work is complete.
- Knowledge is King. Your lake has a history. It has a finger print of areas that are the best for the beginning of the Spawn. You must seek out those with that knowledge as you do not have a year to get this accomplished.
- Learn what staging area are and how they work to catch fish both coming and going to the spawning flats.
- Wind direction this time of year is a big factor. Pick your spots with that in mind. Be prepared for a North wind as well as the prevailing SE wind.
- Start with coves on the North end of the lake with as much rock as possible. A cove that will keep the warm water trapped is a must when the North wind blows.
- Narrow it down to coves that run West with a slight Dog Leg turning it to the South. The longer the better.
- Coves that run East on the other side of the lake with this same Dog Leg turning South or North will also be good spawning coves.
- Learn to recognize the Spawning Flats. Study the bends in the creek channel adjacent to these flats. Target the inside bends and the areas between the forks of creeks near the back of the coves. Then find the staging areas closest to these areas. These must be a very short distance away. Big fish will pull out on these when inclement weather moves in; leaving the flats.

It is a long time consuming process that I have spent years learning. I will be glad to help you make some of those short cuts and explain them further to you with examples. Without this knowledge you are leaving it up to luck of being in the right place at the right time and that just does not happen very often.

Good advice ☝️👌.....its lengthy but its 100% spot on