Woo Daves says he usually carries "at least 19 to 21 rods to a tournament" -- and that's in his boat, not his truck. Why so many? Because you have to be ready for anything.

"You hope that your plan of attack will work," he says. If not, "you hope you can narrow it down to what's really working well, but that doesn't always work either."

As an example of such cases, he cites his win of the 2000 BASS Masters Classic. When winds forced all the competitors off Lake Michigan for almost all of the three competition days, which killed all the pre-practice patterns the pros found, Daves had the gear on board to improvise.

He won by fishing a tube with 6-pound line -- using a Zebco push-button spin- cast reel on a flipping stick. The reason for that odd set-up was to get the tube to "fall straight down in the grass," Daves says. He needed a reel that would let the tube fall completely straight and a rod long enough to stay far enough back in the clear water, and he had them in his rod locker.

Junk Fishing

Pros use the term "junk fishing" to refer to fishing a non-pattern pattern, if you will. A fish here and a fish there. Daves is one of several pros who likes to junk-fish whenever he gets the opportunity, and he says his plethora of gear helps him do that better.

"It could be a lily pad, a stump, a dropoff or a boat dock. You approach each one with the lure (and rod and reel) you think would work best. You might want to flip the outside of a dock or skip a lure under it. That requires two different setups."

He notes that at the Eufaula BASSMASTER, he fished "buzzbaits, topwaters, a lizard on a spinning rod, a Carolina rig, a Fluke and flipped a jig. It just depended on where I was and what I felt like was best way to fish that structure."

Don't Leave a Green Pasture

"When I'm fishing, I'm trying to analyze each thing -- how I should fish it best, rather than just going all day, say, fishing a Carolina rig on points," Daves says. "If I see a laydown tree, I might go over and fish it with a spinnerbait. If I then move out to a ledge in 10 feet of water, I'll be fishing a crankbait, a spinnerbait, a Carolina rig and I'll be hopping a jig."

He fishes multiple techniques in one spot even if he's gotten all his bites with a single technique. "I try to make them bite with a different technique rather than leave because I know fish are there. I think most people catch a fish with one technique, and leave. But I don't want to leave a green pasture.

"I'm not going to catch them all with one thing," he says. "If I feel like I'm in an area with fish, I'll fish other things to try to get something going."

Learn Soft-Plastics

"Certain fishermen out there just stick with one technique," Daves notes. "If the fish aren't biting spinnerbaits one year, you can bet that certain guys won't be in the Classic.

"But I feel like I can be pretty good with anything. I've fished tournaments when I've caught every fish on a crankbait, topwater, floating worm or Carolina rig, but as a general rule I try lots of things."

For those who don't have wide-ranging expertise with various fishing techniques, Daves recommends mastering soft-plastic baits. "They all basically fish about the same," he says.

The reason is that "more bass are caught on soft-plastic baits than all the other lures put together." Plus "it's a good way to learn. You develop feel and confidence, and they teach you to concentrate. You also fish slower, and study structure more. That helps you when you're fishing other lures."

Soft-plastics also "catch fish from Florida to New York to California."

"You don't want to just go out 24/7 with a jig or any other lure," Daves says. "You want to become versatile."

And if you have a problem learning new techniques, use the old tried and true method of leaving everything else at home. "I used to not catch any fish on a jig or a worm," he says. "But I left everything else home and just fished with those. It worked."