Story by Todd Goade | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Christmas is here, and before you know it, we’ll be hitching up the boat and heading to our first event of the 2026 season. For me, that will be the NPFL Championship at Smith Lake in Alabama, as I have been fortunate to qualify for every NPFL Championship thus far, and I don’t intend to change that!
Practice for me has evolved over the years. The ability to manage fish over a three-day event is crucial to making a check, winning an event, and qualifying for those championships. Here are some of the things I do when I hit the lake on practice Day 1:
The purpose of practice, in my opinion, is to analyze what’s going on in the fishery at that time and understand what types of areas the bass are using. Practice is not to necessarily find the objects that we actually catch fish off. That’s something I can generally do in the tournament. With practice, I idle around a good bit, but I probably don’t idle as much as a lot of people do. I’m not interested in stuff for stuff’s sake.
I love my Lowrance HDS Pro 12 with structure scan and it’s fantastic for finding objects—a boulder, a hard spot, a brush pile. When I find those places, I’ll stop and make a cast or two, mainly to see if I can get a bite and to see the size of the fish on that piece of structure or cover.
I’m more interested in breaking down the fishery and understanding what areas of the lake set up best for the time of year that I’m fishing. Which means that I’m not necessarily showing up anticipating that I’m going to go hunt X type of cover. Because if I’m showing up doing that, I’m kind of putting myself in the mindset that I am looking for stuff for stuff’s sake and that my success or failure is going to be determined by my ability to find X thing.
I’m looking for the core population of fish and what kind of areas they want to use in terms of contours and how a fishery sets up. When you’re going with that mindset, your first reaction is not necessarily to idle, because idling is very useful for finding things and at times, it can be useful for finding fish, but it’s not extremely useful for assessing how a population is set up.
I still fish quite a bit in practice to see how the fish are reacting to certain baits and presentations as I’ve always been a “fish the conditions” and instincts kind of guy. I haven’t won practice in a lot of years, and I’ll fish just enough to think “Yep, this is the deal.” I’m also willing to make a lot of little adjustments with my line size, with my weight, with my profile and my bait, whatever it may be, in practice because I want to go into the tournament with my bait or my technique as dialed as possible so that I don’t waste any opportunities I see in the tournament but manufacture more of those opportunities in the tournament. The more efficient you are, the more casts you can make, and the more opportunities you open yourself up to to catch a bass.
So, as you launch your boat into your favorite lake, try this mindset and approach and see if helps you put a few more pieces of the puzzle together and catch a few more fish.
Tight Lines!
Todd Goade – Angler Profile
