Fishing partner and I complement eachother well. We fish different styles at the beginning of the tourney day until we begin to dial in. Sometimes it takes us a while to sync up depending on who is getting bit better. We all know �one fish is luck, two is a pattern.� Problem is when we are both getting bit but fish are same size. I fish deeper and slower, he fishes shallower and a little faster. We position boat where we can both do our thing. What are yall�s thoughts? Switch to the deeper bite and slow down or switch to the shallow bite and cover more water? We have done both and are 50/50 on total upgrades.

Keep doing what you're doing sounds like it works

If you're for sure on a proved pattern, you both should be doing the same thing. Until then, fishing deep and shallow both will help establish the pattern faster. If you're catching good ones both shallow and deep, stick with it. Then go get some lottery tickets on your return trip home.

Switching baits is the key sometimes, one keeps throwing what is working the other tries different presentations and baits to figure out if the bigger fish are there.

The thing that makes us do the same thing in this situation is switching to whoever was getting the more aggressive bite.

Good point BMCD

Glad you have a strategy. I have fished with partners that didn't have any.

We usually just throw confidence baits. If it doesn't work we look for a marina that serves good food and cold beer. Then we go to weigh in, tell everyone that we dumped about 12 pounds, and talk about the 8+ that go off at the boat, and how well we caught the pre fishing.

My partner and i also start off throwing slightly different presentations. Generally we throw the same style, be it moving bait or a slow worked bait, but that depends on our pre tournament strategy and how we did in pre fishing. I generally catch numbers and he generally catches the bigger fish, i think this is because i tend to fish a little fast while he fishes a little slower. Either way we seem to team up well (been fishing together since college) but still have a lot to learn for locating fish on new waters. But the goal is to keep trying different techniques until we can put a few in the boat and focus in on one bait.

Edit: spelling

The single most important thing about a partner is his net skills..

Unless YOU are the net man. Then it's their mad fish catching skills...

We almost always have a plan based on what we learned prefishing. We both start off the tournament doing what got us bit and where. My thought is that we don't know on which cast or in which exact location we are going to catch the fish we need, so we need to maximize the number of casts we make with the "right" bait(s) and presentation. If we have gone through the areas where we expected to catch fish and haven't caught them on what they bit when we prefished, then it might be time to start changing things up.

I will very seldom fish anywhere or anything during a tournament that wasn't successful when prefishing. If I do it will be later in the day and will usually consist of going to places where I have caught fish in the past. I do all my searching for new stuff before the tournament, not during.

I think we fish a lot of the same tournaments.

Don't know if this works for everyone but my partners and I usually have a game plan to either fish shallow or deep. If shallow like this time of the year one will throw a bladed jig and the other a trap. If deep one a football jig and one a Carolina rig or shaky head. We boat a couple and look at size and go from there. I have seen and I am sure most have where fishing is not the norm. Where when fishing deep a Carolina rig centipede will catch better fish than a football jig. In fishing everyday is a new day and once we think we have it figured out the old switch is thrown and makes us second guess everything we know or have learned.