The saying is “practice makes perfect,” and that’s not really true of practicing by pre-fishing before a tournament. Everyone can’t be perfect in a fishing tournament, no mater how much they practice. “Practice can make better” is a truer statement.
Interviewing the top three finishers of the Lake Fork Huk B.A.S.S. Nation Kayak Series powered by TourneyX presented by Abu Garcia really made it apparent how important it was to effectively find fish while pre-fishing.
This is beyond obvious to you guys who have done well in tournaments and who regularly show up a few days before a contest — or at least make it to the lake on weekends leading up to the tournament.
In the first two B.A.S.S. Nation Kayak Series tournaments, Alabama’s Logan Martin on March 5 and Texas’ Lake Fork on Saturday, I didn’t plan enough days for pre-fishing. Work, in the form of article deadlines, got in the way of heading south out of Michigan to pre-fish a couple of days. The result: I finished 112th in both of them. Kind of embarrassing, but at least embarrassing in a unique way.
I’m not saying that I could have done a whole lot better with a few days on the water before competition day, but some days of practice could have at least made my tackle leaner and meaner. Meaning I could have focused on packing the lures that were working and spent less time looking for things to try on tournament day.
The top two anglers, Cody Milton of Searcy, Ark., and Dan Krispinsky of Augusta, Ga., both located bass on beds during their practice days and sight fished for them. Milton caught big females by dropping a Strike King Rage Bug on their heads to accumulate 100.5 inches. Krispinky enticed the big ones to bite with a Chasebaits Mudbug, possibly the most realistic crawfish lure made. He had 97.75 inches. Third place Chad Dagley of Scurry, Texas, fished shallow rocks and rip-rap with a Rat-L-Trap and a bladed jig, likely encountering spawners up shallow. He totaled 95 inches.
With my late arrival, I didn’t even have much chance to check out different ramps. Tournament eve, I compared Google Earth with Navionics and my Map app and found one of Fork’s many bridge easements near the back of a creek arm that looked like it had lots of shallow spawning areas. With predictions of a strong south wind, this arm also looked like it would be fairly protected.
I dropped a pin on it with the Map app and discovered it was only 11 minutes from my motel in Emory, and exactly the same drive in the other direction to check-in at Lake Fork Marina & Motel.
It turned out it was an area with plenty of fish, and I apparently was the only one of five kayakers who used the same launch to not get a limit.
I got the most bites on a Senko that I Texas-rigged and fished 24 inches behind a pegged, 1/4-ounce tungsten bullet sinker. Tree swings, three misses for a strike out. I finally moved up to a 4/0 hook from a 3/0, but didn’t get any more bites on it.
With just a few hours to go and no fish caught yet, I decided to stay shallow — 2 to 4 feet deep — and throw a Finesse ShadZ, a skinny Z-Man bait that looks like a minnow. The color was Pumpkin/Green Flake and it was on a chartreuse, 1/16-ounce mushroom head. Almost immediately I hooked my first largemouth of the day, and it quickly wrapped my 8-pound Seaguar AbrazX leader around a stick. That stuff was tough enough to break the stick — really more of a twig — and I netted the fish and the wood. The bass was 15.25 inches.
I quickly had another bite on the same bait and it turned out to be a slab of a crappie cruising the shallows.
After a long time without another bite on that lure, I switched to another Ned-size offering, cutting a 4-inch Big TRD down to 3 inches and rigging it on a Gamakatsu 1/16-ounce No. 211 round jighead. It was in the Mudbug color, a kind of gray with copper flake that has worked for me in muddy water. It worked at Fork, except it didn’t catch the right fish. It started with a freshwater drum, which I really thought was a bass, then caught an 11-inch bass (too short to submit) and a channel cat of about 2 pounds.
So I had some fun fishing, I just didn’t catch enough of the right kind of fish.
Next up is Chicamauga in May, and all those Tennessee kayakers are going to be tough to beat. A whole bunch of them are in the Knoxville area and know that reservoir well. I think a lot of them are born with baitcasting gear in their hands, and in fact, four of the top 10 at Logan Martin were from the Volunteer State. My goal will be to show up Tuesday night so I can get a few days of fishing in before the tournament starts. I’ll be extra hopeful that I don’t finish 112th for the third time in a row.
Kayak frat
Generosity between kayak anglers is so common it doesn’t really amaze, but it’s not taken for granted. The night before the tournament in the motel parking lot, a small sedan with a kayak atop it was parked next to my truck at the motel. When I went out to sort through tackle in my truck, the sedan owner was just removing his tackle crate from the car.
Louis Conn, of Jacksonville, Texas, and I got to talking fishing on the lake, and he’d had some success pre-fishing. He gave me a couple of custom-made swimbaits, big ones, like 9-inchers, that needed an 8/0 hook.
“You won’t catch many with these, but when you get one, it’ll be a big ‘un,” he said.
His fish in pre-fishing, he said, ate a smaller swimbait rigged on a jighead that featured a belly spinner blade. He told me he was casting it right against shore in super skinny water and working it slowly.
Tournament morning I got down to my truck and Louis’ car and kayak were already gone. On my door handle was the same swimbait set-up he’d been using to catch fish. It looked great in the water, but, alas, didn’t work any better than the dozen or so other baits I threw in the course of the day.
Yes, going to kayak tournaments is about trying to be successful and see how one compares to the rest of the field.
It’s also about meeting guys like Louis Conn.
Dachshund update
This trip I took my dachshund Gus along s a travel companion. I left him home when I drove to Logan Martin and got daily texts from my better half about how many puddles and piles she found every night when she got home from work. He really figured out how to train me to not leave without him. As you can see in the picture, he adjusted well to motel life.
