Sleets, your right about trying new techniques during a tournament. That isn't the place to try them. It may just end up discouraging you. What you need to do, is goto a lake where you want to try a new technique, and one where it has been proven effective. Take only the gear designed for that specific technique. If you want to practice flippin, then don't even take finesse gear or spinnerbaits, etc. with you. This will force you to only use the chosen technique the whole time. Also frogs can be good on ths lake, but the thing I've found with guys that frog all day, is that they rarely get the quality of fish needed to win a tournament at Palestine. I believe you can catch big fish on a frog, but I doubt you can always catch 5 big ones on it. There are times you can, but I think bigger fish are smarter than to constantly chase down a frog. I think they are more likely to wait for something to come to them. They got to be that big for a reason. Many more anglers are likely to frog all day, than to work for 5 quality bites. Plus the hookup ratio flipping is enormously higher than by frogging. There is a time and place for every technique, and that is what each angler must choose. Palestine is the only lake I will leave an area when I am catching a lot of fish at, to find even bigger fish. Too bad we don't have that problem on more lakes lol.