Planning - Start months in advance.   

I am by no means a pro fisherman, but have fished tournaments for years with varying levels of success.   I have won tournaments and angler of year races and the common denominator in all was planning and preparation.  That planning and preparation is broken out into many segments.   First, start with what is your goal and circuit that you plan to fish for the year.   What is you goal?  Where do you want to finish?  How do you get to that point?  How do you start.  Personally,  I start every year with a notebook of the tournaments I will fish and what lakes will I be fishing on.   Organizing your year and getting your goals in line is the first step.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses, so set your goals for each lake based on your abilities and try to expand upon them.  I maintain a logbook on each lake I fish that has my past fishing logs in the binder as well as all magazine articles or information I may have gathered on the lake.   I then take the schedule and divide the binder by lake and date where I start to break down patterns that have worked in the past or articles about the lake and how it fishes in that time period.  This will allow me to begin to prefish and think about what will be going on and plan before I get there, but be open minded you never know what mother nature may throw you.   The fish may set up in an entirely different way. 

Second,  Set your realistic goals for each tournament, do your homework and work your plan.   We cannot win them all but do your best and prepare efficiently for each and every opportunity.   The second section about prefishing and preparation will further discuss this piece.   I put the information discussed in my notebook after the tournament and cleaning up the details.  I also put the information in my notebook for the lake for further reference at a later date.   The more detail you put into all of this information the more it will help you in the future as well as the better you will remember it in the future fishing situations and the better decision maker it will make you.   Fishing is as much about making good decisions as it is having the hot lure, the right boat, or any other variable you want ot add it it.   The biggest mistake I see myself as well as others make is to get complacent or to just go through the motions.  So always be thinking and have a backup plan and ideas to fall back on. 

Third, never stop learining.  This seems to be self evident but sometimes we get set in our ways and we just want to make the fish do what we want them to do.  We want them to be where we think they should be.   I read an interesting article about a tourin pro the other day and he deletes his waypoints after every tournament so he doesnt get too entrenched in an exact spot as variables can move fish.   Expand your thoughts of what fish do and where to catch them.  Learn new methods and refine the ones you are proficient at.  I fished way out of my comfort zone most of the year and feel like it was a great help to me and has allowed me to be a better fisherman for it.  I still found myself getting into the old habits and chasing old memories at times.  Always be prepared to do new things and to look at why you caught that fish and what made the fish be there.  If there was one there are more.  

Mental and physical health is also another part of preparation that most people overlook.   This last year for me was enlightening in many ways.   I learned a lot about fishing and structures this year, but the biggest thing I believe I took from this year was mental and physical preparation can be as important as any part of your fishing preparations.   Mental preparation is one that is talked about at length by many people in terms of concentration and keeping a game face.  My simple idea of this is keep your mental worries at a minimum and keep it fun.  If you are putting yourself in bad positions financially to fish a tournament or putting undo stress on yourself it will make decision making even harder for you.  I am not saying not to challenge yourself but dont overdue it.  Follow your preparations and work your plan, it will work as often as it is supposed to.   Phyiscal preparation is another piece that I think is overlooked a lot.  The past few years I have been training and running half marathons and what I found was the first of the year I could fish all day with no back pain and had much better stamina to fish all day.  I had several injuries early in the year and quit training.   As the year went on I struggled to maintain that stamina in the boat and pains began to cause me trouble and my decision making suffered.  Once I started training again by October and race time I was beginning to make good decisions again.  I am not saying you should go out and lose 40# and lift weights everyday but it will definitely help you if you do.  Just improving your stamina by walking a little more or doing some exercise will go a long way I promise.