I fished a lake in Ontario this week that I have fished a few times before for a derby with some friends. While fishing a point, I saw a ball of bait with fish busting on it on livescope and I chased them all over that pocket landing 6-7 smallies in the mid 3s and one in the low 4s. I found another one in a completely separate area later that day and caught another one before I figured I could replicate that pattern the day of the tournament. That was not to be on the day.

I haven't seen a lot of people talk about that as a pattern frequently, but I did see bait on sidescan several occasions and typically had fish harassing them, but man is it difficult to chase them all over the lake. Is that a common pattern at a lot of lakes for SMB or did I just seem to hit it right?

I have gotten into topwater smallies chasing shad many times, don’t think it has ever happened two days in a row on the same spot tho

Its a relatively common pattern in midsummer.

I've chased that around a few times over the years myself and it was mostly a fruitless endeavor. They are not relating to any type of structure or cover, they are just lazily following around bait balls.

If this is your primary tactic come tournament day, I'd put together a contingency plan that targeted fish that were more closely related to some kind of structure.

Seasonally dependent, fishery and conditions dependent. You can chase fish on FFS at the right time of year (pre-prespawn) with some consistency but the consistency from day to day comes down to the layout of the fishery and the conditions. I don’t fish tournaments but every time out I go for a best five mentality and how a tournament might look on that day. If ‘bass chasing bait’ is your pattern then finding pinch points (ditches, ledges, saddles,etc) which are normal fish magnets are going to be more consistent and then bounce around a bunch of them until the bait gets there. Chasing the balls of bait around the lake is a fruitless endeavor.