"Todd Copeland" wrote in message
ink.net...
Now that I have a boat with a livewell, I'm looking into entering a simple
tournament. Just to put this into perspective, I'm not looking to win, I
just want to give it a try for the fun of it. I live in Florida and I've
noticed that many of the tourney's are at night (6pm-9pm or 9pm-2am). I've
fished until dusk before and then stopped as it just becomes difficult to
fish when you cannot see anything. I'm wondering how people fish at night.
Do you use spot lights to see the shore, tree limbs, surface vegetation,
etc? Do people usually fish off shore for the most part? Any insight you
can
gie would be great!


I just fished an evening tournament last night. 4:30 to 8:20. At 8:10 I
put the pedal to the floor and let er roar. I had no problem seeing my way
back to the weigh dock. So... Another hour and it would have been too dark
to see well. I could probably have stilled fished. It was dark enough
though that everybody should have had their lights on. I was a bit
disappointed that I was the only one who did.

In the past I have gotten totally turned around and lost in a series of back
channels fishing at night. I went around the same channel loop a dozen
times it seemed like before I forced myself to use my head and watch the
stars to keep my bearing and find my way out to the main lake I was fishing.
We used a pocket flashlight to look at the banks that night. If it had been
overcast I would have had to use a right turns only method to find my way
out of that maze.

Shortly after that I bought my first GPSMap. I also bought a 2 million
candle power portable spot light.

In the long distant past I used to fish for crappie at night by drifting a
canoe across a pond with the breeze. We had a 5 gallon propane tank and one
of those bulk tank adaptor stems to put a propane lantern on that put the
lamp about 4 feet up in the air. It worked great. We could fish all night
even on an overcast night. I had a snap on reflector that I would put on
the rear side of the lantern to direct light only forward so I could see
where we were going when it was time to head in.

A lot of guys who fish nights have black lights that clip on the rails of
their boat.

If you know the water you are fishing really well it helps.

My personal biggest concern about night tournaments though is other boaters.
Somebody sitting dead in the water with no lights on or ....


--
Bob La Londe
http://www.YumaBassMan.com