I was at a 400 acre lake recently and there was a 20 boat tournament at the same time. It seem like there was only certain spots people would fish and would just rotate according to if there was a boat on there or not. Is this common it happened all 8 hours
 

one odd thing is I fished the same spots either before or after and had no luck get a few weighed in a nice bag. I was fishing just a jig and it was post frontal

Never seen or fished one on that small of water. Smallest for me is 900 acres, and that was too snug.

Very common, regardless of lake size. Let’s not forget the Haynes-Lambert fiasco on 184 mile long Kentucky Lake a few years back. I’ve tourney fished on lakes as small as 300 acres, and known productive spots will get visited by most in an all day event. It can be mildly entertaining at times.

We did some of our weeknight tournaments on 100 acre lakes with 8-12 boats but we did catch, weight, release tournaments instead of hauling 5 fish around and risk killing fish. Some lakes have lots of productive water, others have select areas that are known to be much more productive than the rest and tend to get rotated through by most of the guys. 

 

I try to hit the secondary stops that get less pressure in those situations. Areas that might take more work to get through, or hold fewer fish, but I'll have them more to myself and hope that the rest of the field eat each other. 

Our Tuesday night tourneys are on a 448 acre lake which is basically a small river.  We get 20 to 28 boats every time and it works out.  Most people have their favorite spots and some are community spots that get hit by everyone.

If all the honey holes are getting hammered then you might think about keeping  the trolling motor down ,  head down the banks and out-fish everyone else . Lure selection and  placement will go a long way .

 

I belonged to a small bass club back in the 70's and small waters were all we had to fish . The smallest we fished was 80 acres . Everybody fished out of jon boats with elec motors and no sonar .

 

I just looked closely at my hat . Manns bait company . I was a jelly worm fanatic .