If I was fishing Berryessa in March this is how I would approach it. With the tournament being in the early spring I feel that the two most important factors will be the weather and the moon phase. These two will hold true on any body of water you fish this time of year. First the weather...and I will try to make it simple. If it has been steadily warming with sable weather there will be more fish moved up into the spawning areas and tighter to the bank. If the weather has been unstable, look for them to pull out on the first break leading into the spawning area or suspend off points.
The weather will also influence the water temp, around 55 the smallmouth will start moving in to spawn and around 58 the large mouth. The moon phase will dictate when they will spawn, there will be a major spawn on the full moon and a minor on the new moon. Most of the activity of the actual spawning will happen around 3-4 days leading and trailing the full or new moon. This would be your best opportunity for sight fishing. If I were prefishing this event I would target prespawn fish for 75% of my time during the first part of the day I will be throwing some type of reaction bait to cover as much water as possible also different baits to cover the water column from top to bottom. I am trying to find as many groups of active fish as possible, you don’t want to find just one little group and hang your whole tournament on them, as more often than not, this will "bite" you. The last part of the day providing that the weather is stable and the sun is out I will put the poles down and go looking for spawners. If you have multiple days to prefish repeat this each day as some times they are not there - then they move in over night. This has been my approach to prefishing this time of year on all body’s of water.
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