I'd be glad to speed up your learning curve.

Let's go sometime. I live on fork and fish a lot by myself. I'm no pro by any means but I can catch one every now and then.

Catch 5 fish and bring them in alive every time

It's a learning curve. Enter a couple small tournaments and analyze how you do in each one

I realize the mystique of fishing Fork is something you ( and everyone else ) wants to figure out, but 1 thing you'll get from fishing bass clubs is the knowledge of fishing other lakes. You will also build confidence in yourself. I was a Fork /Ray Roberts guy primarily due to the proximity of Frisco, but after fishing with McKinney Bass Club for 2 seasons, my favorite lakes are now Athens, Palestine, LOP & Monticello. IMO, Fork is a tough Lake to learn. It's gets even tougher with 1200 boats zooming around on tournament day. And even spending 50+ days a year on Fork, I still have more than my fair share of ZEROs.

As mentioned above, not only do clubs provide fishing skill improvements, generally theres sharing information not only about patterns and lure selection and each club will have an electronics guru or 2 to help you with your set up. Plus the cost per tournament is much less than those $100-$300 big fish tourneys you've been fishing. For instance, MBC is $30 annual for membership and $40/tourney. Bass champs, BLT, Texas Team trail are all great trails, but IMO you won't learn much from others going that route. And YEs, I have fished both BassChamps and BLT.

If you have any questions about MBC, please send me a PM and I'll be glad to answer any questions or point you to our officers.

Jeff

Try the BFL as a non boater. You will be surprised of the education you will get out of that experience. You will not only about how tournaments are ran but how to fish different techniques. It s a great way to learn

join a club that has a non boater draw (McKinney bass club is a good one) and then you can get a good start as to learning from different people how to fish tournaments.

I guess I have a dumb question...

What is there to learn about tournament fishing? It seems like common sense to me.

1. Try to catch the 5 biggest fish you can.
2. Understand and follow all the rules of the tournament.
3. Realize tournament fishing is gambling. Chances are you're going to lose more than you win.

I understand how to fish and that I need to bring in the biggest fish to win, but my point is with all the running around and "spots" to get to and time of day and lures to use, etc...how do you accomplish this. Being new to owning a boat and never fishing deep per say I am just curious how to be better at fishing in these things. It is tough to know all the ins and outs of actually being on the water vs. standing on a bank most of your life.

I am a do it myself and learn kind of guy over a read about it or watch youtube to learn.

Now I understand your question. First of all, there is no substitute for time on the water. To learn, you've gotta be there doing it. Maximize your time while you are at the lake....meaning that when you plan a trip, make it a daylight to dark trip to get the most out of it. It costs a lot less to stay on the lake than to drive home and then drive back to the lake.

You can educate yourself a lot nowadays right here online. Watching videos, reading articles, etc...that will help speed up the education process, but be careful not to fill your head with too much information that will only confuse you.

My simple advise is this - learn the basics of fishing and fish behavior (where they are supposed to be at that particular time of the year) and spend time learning to catch fish. There is nothing better than learning something yourself. The beauty (but also most aggravating thing) about fishing is there is no right answer to catching fish. For example, lots of guys think the only way to catch a fish during the spawn is to sight fish. Not true, there's plenty of fish to be caught away from the bank. Spend time on the water.

I started by fishing a few low entry fee tournaments. Like couples tournaments, rattle trap tournaments etc. Those got me familiar with tournament fishing and I started understanding how the process worked. Once I figured that out I fished a full season as a coangler in the BFLs. I did it with the sole intention of learning how pros (and I use that term loosely) approached tournaments. I had some good boaters and some bad ones but I took it all in.
This will be my first year as a boater in the BFLs and my expectations are pretty low. My goal for the first one is to just catch a limit. And when that starts happening regularly I'll build on it. Good luck!

Doing well in bass tournaments is the hardest thing I've ever tried in my life. I feel like I've accomplished some fairly difficult things in life but nothing has been as slow and frustrating as competitive bass fishing!