Tag Archives: Bass Fishing

Learning the Water: Kayak Tournament Fishing in Falls Lake

20 Monday Mar 2023

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I. The Question

Fishing is an acquired skill. Like just about anything else worth doing, it requires practice. Some people are quick to learn the art of casting and tying knots, others require time to learn the basics. Some simply give up. I was tempted on several occasions, before I even began fishing from a kayak, let alone tournament fishing. It’s much easier to just watch people catch fish on television.

In order to fish competitively, you also have to learn about gear, techniques for specific types of fishing and also how to fish certain waters. Add in kayaks, with their specialization and physical effort, and you can understand why some folks buy a bass boat. Kayak fishing is not easy.

I know. As I said, I learned it all the hard way. I competed in kayak tournaments for nine years without a 1st place finish. Over the past three seasons, I have had four of them on three different lakes (Jordan, Shearon Harris and Falls). Each one of those lakes is a different animal, and I have been fishing them all for the past fifteen years (and in the case of Jordan, even longer).

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Kayak Fishing: Wading, Portaging and Fishing in Fast Water

15 Friday Apr 2022

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Introduction

How do you navigate fast, shallow water in a fishing kayak? And how do you fish that water? It isn’t always simple or easy. Prior to a recent tournament on Falls Lake in North Carolina, I consulted the USGS gauges for the rivers on the north end of the lake. There had been some rain, but not too much, and I wondered if some of the resident fish might be active due to food and oxygenated water flowing downstream. So I decided to give it a shot.

I prepared for some expected obstacles and eventualities, and improvised along the way. The result? A 7th place finish in a field of 57 anglers. Afterward, I made a short post about it on social media. The response was extensive and positive so I decided to expand the post in order to share more details about the effort, problem solving and safety tips involved in fishing this particular type of water.

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Kayak Fishing in Carolina Country Magazine

07 Monday Mar 2022

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As more anglers take up paddles and fish from a kayak, more companies take notice. Outdoors media now regularly feature kayak anglers in their publications, a sure sign that our sport is growing and reaching new audiences.

In North Carolina, we have one of the oldest and most well organized kayak fishing scenes in the United States. The sport has grown here at a grassroots levels through clubs and trails and tournaments, attracting the attention of outdoors writers.

In this article below, outdoors writer Mike Zlotnicki interview me for a profile in the January 2022 issue of Carolina Country magazine. It’s a profile of me, but also our sport. Click the magazine title or the full link below, and please share it to spread the word!

https://www.carolinacountry.com/issues/2022/departments/nc-outdoors/quiet-competition-the-joys-of-kayak-fishing-tournaments

Rebel’s P-71 Rejuvenates the Pop-R: Product Review

19 Monday Jul 2021

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Introduction

When I heard the news that the Rebel Lure Company was going to release a new version of its Pop-R model in 2021, my hair stopped greying and I felt ten years younger; when I heard the lure was a throwback to Rebel’s legendary P-70 design of the early 1980’s, I felt like a kid again.

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Late Winter Bass Fishing

07 Sunday Mar 2021

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In this blog post for the Jackson Kayak website, I describe how paying attention to clues in the natural world (a deep water fish kill, buds growing on trees) led me to the winning bass bite at a tournament on a cold February day.

Late Winter Tournament Bass Fishing in the Bite FD

Back-Tracking, Double-Guessing & Sloth: Notes from a CKA Event on the Cape Fear River

27 Monday Jul 2020

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Saturday, July 25th, 2020.

The forecast says baste your hide and prepare to be cooked.

When I arrived at the launch site there was a truck parked there, but it wasn’t Drew Blair’s truck. A man emerged from the woods dragging a kayak from the direction of the river, his headlight beam a cloud of insects.

“This isn’t the start I was expecting.”

My second thought was “Where the hell is Drew?” A short conversation later, and I said goodbye to Mitch, the woodsman, who gave up on the launch site. “That’s a rough launch” he said. I offered to help Mitch because I knew, deep in my heart, that Drew was asleep and I wasn’t going to make it alone. He always sleeps in on tournament day. Sure enough, a phone call confirmed it. Thankfully, he lives nearby. Mitch declined.

I waited in the dark for a bit. There wasn’t any morning breeze. I wondered if there was any air. I hoped to hide from the bugs in the darkness, but they found me. I was standing still but I was sweating. The sun would rise in 30 minutes. Drew, half asleep, rolled up and tried to use his Jedi mind powers to make the Hobie slide off his truck.

I’ve launched from difficult locations. This one ranked near the top of the list. The weeds were waist high, ruts in the abandoned road were knee deep and the drop from the bank to the water was actually two separate drops that added up to a Cubist painting. After launching, I realized that one of my rods left one of my lures somewhere in a tree branch behind us.

This isn’t an essay about how good I am at my favorite sport. It’s about a hot river and a cold bite. It’s about the risks I take, the decisions I make and the company I keep. It’s about admitting nature doesn’t care about your fishing plan – or any plan for that matter.

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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.

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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 →