Category Archives: Bio

Jackson Bite FD: Product Review

01 Monday Mar 2021

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My review of the Jackson Bite FD focuses on the kayak’s inviting and easily modified “Open” design. I also note other excellent features that should be considered (price point, material quality) for what is the best all around fishing kayak on the market.

Link to full review: https://jacksonadventures.com/2020/05/the-jackson-bite-angler-and-bite-fd-accessibility-comfort-and-stability/

Full Disclosure: I am a member of the Jackson Kayak Fishing team, and this review appears on their website. I wrote this article after 6 months of using the rig, and while revisiting it I am pleased with how well the review stands up. I have fished from many kayaks and have used other models at demos, and I always write unbiased, honest reviews. Scroll to the comments section of the site, below the article, and you will see an additional point I made about the fixed skeg, for example.

Product Review: The Redline TailSpin

05 Thursday Mar 2020

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My review of this clever reinvention of a classic lure design is now up on the KBF Blog.

Disclaimer: I am not on the RedLine Pro Staff. This is an article I wrote because of my interest in new interpretations of older lure designs.

Click here for more: https://www.kayakbassfishing.com/blog-reinventing-the-tailspin/

Thanks for reading!

H

 

One Path among many, but only One Boat: On Joining the Jackson Fishing Team

27 Thursday Feb 2020

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Beginnings contain more than an intention. When we start on something new, we bring to it our history, or memory, and culture. We add to it our desire and we imagine what might be. We peer at the horizon and dream to see what might be there, but we can never truly know. Beginnings are that too – they are possibilities, only some of which become real.  In his wonderful book Invisible Cities, the writer Italo Calvino imagines Marco Polo entertaining Kublai Khan with stories while the two men play chess. One story begins; “The man who is traveling and does not yet know the city awaiting him along his route wonders what the palace will be like, the barracks, the mill, the theater, the bazaar.” When he arrives, he finds a different city.

Like me, Marco Polo was an Italian of Venetian descent, a wandered on water and land, a person who, when he saw the griffin carrying the tablet the Lord delivered to Saint Mark, paused. I am partial to his Travels not only for their beauty and imagination but because they were written as if each word were a stage of the journey. At times, you never quite know where they will lead. Sometimes we move in straight lines or at angles. At others we move on tracks adjacent to the ones we had planned, a step removed from some other possible reality. Sometimes the paths intersect, at others they diverge. We might even come full circle. Continue reading →

A Note of Thanks to the Ketch Pro Team

17 Friday Jan 2020

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The history of modern sports is a history of athletic feats and great stories, but it is also a history of product innovation. From Thomas Alva Edison and Samuel Colt to Stephanie Kwolek and Steve Jobs, American engineers and scientists have mustered tremendous creativity to lead American business in the modern world. Their products are artful and useful. Tournament anglers use them and depend on them in order to succeed; for example, Stephanie Kwolek’s innovations in polymers for the DuPont Corporation were fundamental to the plastics we use in fishing lines and kayak design. Over time, we trust the materials and designs. And I trust my Ketch measuring board like no other product I own.

I’ve been tournament fishing from a kayak for 8 years. During that time, I have watched many friends obtain some lucrative sponsor deals, pro staff arrangements and other agreements. In exchange, they often give their time by promoting products on-line, working trade shows and spreading the gospel of kayak fishing at paddling demos, seminars, etc. It’s easy to make fun of kayak anglers and their sponsor deals. What isn’t easy is to put in the work: build a resume’ in competition, write articles, produce videos, work the industry shows, etc. Fishing is an art and also a business; it can kill your love of the sport but it can also help you achieve your dreams. In the best-case scenario it can grow your love for kayak fishing and expand the positive economic impact of our sport. Joining the Ketch Pro Team is a best-case scenario.

Continue reading →

Following the Arrowhead: Fishing the 2019 FLW-KBF Cup on Lake Ouachita

13 Tuesday Aug 2019

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I will speak more directly for a change. No quotes from great poets or philosophers. The Professor will step aside, and the angler will be alone. I’m going to discuss teamwork, I’m going to discuss the current state of the sport of kayak bass fishing and I am going to talk, most importantly, how I changed my approach tournament fishing this season. I’m going to discuss it because I have placed in the money in 10 of the last 14 events I fished. In one of the other 4 I won 1st place in a charity tournament, and in the other 3 I was in 4th, 3rd and 13th place respectively.* It is the best winning streak of my 8 year career in kayak tournament fishing, so I obviously did something right, and I want to share it because some of it runs against logic of what we are “supposed” to do.

But first, Rick Clunn. When Rick Clunn talks, I listen. I don’t listen to imitate but to interpret what he says. Why? Because experience contains wisdom and that guy has experience spilling out of his pockets. But his experience does not apply to me directly. He fishes boats, I fish from kayaks. I will never win what he has won, or fish how or when or where he has fished. So when I listen, I ask, “How does this translate to me, if at all?”

Continue reading →

Human Patterns: The Kitchen Mystery of Lake Chickamauga

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

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If you can find the pantry, you will find the hungry bass. Think about the first hour of your day. At some point, you went into the kitchen and ate some food. And you followed the same hallway to reach the kitchen, and ate at your favorite chair, drinking coffee from your favorite mug, etc. Now, if you were a bass on a big lake like Lake Chickamauga, you would know that, at this time of year, that bay has frogs and bugs in it, and that point has a ball of shad on it, or that lay down is a good ambush point to wait for a meal to swim by it. Wind, thermocline, pressure and light are other factors, not to mention moon phase, water temperature,  and water levels. They are the basic ingredients of fishing.

Most anglers know this as “pattern fishing.” Roland Martin famously defined a “pattern” as follows:

“[a pattern is] the exact set of water conditions such as depth, cover, structure, temperature, clarity, currents, etc. which attracts fish to that specific spot and other similar spots all over the same body of water.”

A pattern in this sense is a web of changing phenomena. Understand the pattern, and you will find hungry fish. Why? Because fish are creatures of habit. But we are too. And one thing Mr. Martin left out of his puzzle is the human element of the pattern, and the things we learn from other anglers. Here is the story of the puzzle I figured out on Lake Chickamauga prior to the KBF Trail and Pro Series tournaments held there last week. Continue reading →

“Seasonal Heat”: Temperature, Strategy and Tactics at the 2019 KBF National Championship

08 Monday Apr 2019

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A big storm is rolling in as I write this. There is thunder in the distance, so the yard work I neglected for fishing is out of the question. The sky is darker than a crow feather, the air is yellow with pollen and only a fool would venture outside. It’s the sort of dramatic weather that makes us paddle hard and fast to reach safe harbor.

Experienced anglers know that weather plays a large role in influencing how fish feed. To some, it is equal to or even more important than moon phase, or the animal’s biological clock, or even bait selection. But where can we draw the line? How subtle can it be? Does the sky have to look like a Hollywood special effect to make us think how weather impacts a bite? No – Sometimes the smallest margins make the biggest difference. Continue reading →

Recent Product Reviews

15 Saturday Sep 2018

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I struggle writing in  this genre, but I enjoy it, too. Here is a sample of recent product reviews I wrote. Let me know what you think!

  1. The Wilderness Systems Kayak Krate

https://shopgetoutdoors.com/blogs/get-outdoors-blog/review-of-the-wilderness-systems-kayak-krate

2. The Yak Attack Leverage Net

https://shopgetoutdoors.com/blogs/get-outdoors-blog/from-kentucky-lake-to-toledo-bend-fishing-overtime-with-yak-attack-s-leverage-net

 

Video

Memory, Fishing and Stalled Fronts: The May 2018 KBF Armed Forces Challenge

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Bio, Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

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I’m writing this while sitting on a bench in downtown Raleigh waiting to meet up with a friend after a concert. It’s 11 pm and I am barely awake, having fished from sunrise nearly to sunset today, as well as the previous 2 days. This is a post about fishing and exhaustion and memory. There’s a little video evidence of what I discuss in the last paragraphs:

I should write this down before I forget. And when I say forget, I mean I am “wipe the memory slate clean, MIB gadget” tired. I fished for something like 30 hours this weekend and I feel like a tray of lasagna that’s been heated up one too many times. But there is something about exhaustion that can sharpen your focus, narrow down the world. That’s how I managed to jump back into 1st place late on Sunday. It didn’t hold, but that isn’t the important part.

First, congratulations to “Florida” Jerry Burdine and Matt Kasparek for besting me in the KBF Armed Forces Challenge this weekend. I also want to thank Jonathan Lessman and Richard McMichael, as we exchanged leads in a great dog fight over all 3 event days. I saw Jerry’s name high on the leader board every day, too, so he had to grind it out like I did. It was a battle, and he made the “leap” as I call it, with a great final day that put him ahead of the leaders.

This three-day event was not on my schedule because I had other plans. So I buckled down to improvise, adapt to a constantly shifting bite and fish through some bad weather. In the end, I landed fish on three different patterns, using a variety of lures. Day 1 was dominated by swimbaits and crankbaits, a chatterbait produced my best fish on Day 2, and day 3, well, you’ll see…

Continue reading →