Petes,
Dude I will be rooting for you up there. Something interesting I was reading lately was Shaw Grigsby's book was what he was saying about the patterns that win big tournaments. He pointed out that in most tournaments there will be a general pattern, like the senko bite at the WON bass Clear Lake pro-am this year. This primary pattern will take most of the top 5 or 10 spots. But the pattern that actually wins most tournaments will be the secondary patter and usually only 1 or 2 guys will be on this pattern (Like Velvick and Reese being on the trout/swimbait bite up there). The more I thought about this the more true it was. At the WON Bass Don Pedro pro-am in February everyone was worm fishing and jig fishing but that local guy was throwing big trouts of some sort and he smoked everyone. That's 2 out of the 4 nortern region pro/ams right there. I don't know what won it at Shasta and the Delta but a 500 batting average on any fishing theory ain't bad.
So what I'm gettin at is, what if you're the guy who gets on the 7" trout bite on the columbia river for those 4 and 5 pound smallies? I know some guys who've caught some nice smallies at Cachuma on 9 inch AC plugs, and I know every year there's a whole lot of steelhead and salmon smolt in the 4-10 inch range swimming downriver in the Columbia, so you put 2 and 2 together and maybe you got somethin different that those bass have never seen before and you draw those big strikes it takes to win...
Alright I'm getting myself all pumped for a tournament I ain't even going to, but man it's fun to think about that kind of stuff.