There is a good size tournament on sat and they usually end up with 30-60 boats total. The lake is a power plant lake with water temps in high 60s to mid 70s , several feeder creaks and the deepest part is approx 35 feet. The host marina is located just of the main lake near the power plant and the fish are released inside this cove immediately after weigh in.

My question is how far and how fast will these released fish go? We have a tourney the very next day should we start closer to the releas site and fish for those fish or go hit the normal morning spots further down the lake?

Thanks for the advice.

Finesse would be a good approach since the fish got slammed the day before. Not sure if they would be willing to bite the day after the weigh in, lots of stress there, but if they were going to bite it would probably be something "finessy"

Dardanelle?

Start near ramp. Lots of good fish there and not enough bait to go around..

Honestly I'd fish it just like you would any other day a body of water holds a lot of fish they didn't catch them all I can promise you that.

Fish the release area! I have more than one tournament doing that! But don't fish it all day and don't give up on spots you think can hold fish!

You may be able to pick up one or two released fish, but I'd concentrate on getting a decent limit first. If you were able to pre-fish, stick with the areas you targeted. At the very least, start in an area that meets the basics for the time of year, water temp. and forage base and go from there. Those released fish may stick around, but the ones that do will act like spawned out females. Look for the more active ones out off the first main structure break.

Lakes with weekend tournaments always release and restock the marina area. Your goal is to locate and catch bass, the marina has bass, now you just need to catch them.

All bass don't behave the same, a few will leave right away, most will hang around for awhile, some will stay there if there is prey available.

My routine is to check out the marina to determine water temps, baitfish depth and look for active bass. Some days I never leave the marina area!

Tom

Lakes with weekend tournaments always release and restock the marina area. Your goal is to locate and catch bass, the marina has bass, now you just need to catch them.

All bass don't behave the same, a few will leave right away, most will hang around for awhile, some will stay there if there is prey available.

My routine is to check out the marina to determine water temps, baitfish depth and look for active bass. Some days I never leave the marina area!

Tom

Bingo!

Thanks for all the advice fellas. We opted to fish areas we had pre fished and had a limit of small ones early. It was super windy today and rainy but we hung in there and culled out all of them except 1. Our lake rules only allow you to keep 4 over 16 inches or 4 12-14 inch or any combo of the two just none that are touching 14 or under 16. We had 3 that were in the mid 16-17 inch and 1 13incher. Guess next time we will add in some time for targeting fish left over in the marina area. I believe it was 11 or 12 lbs that took first place and we had little over 7lbs.

Still a good day and you probably had fun. Congratz and tight lines