• Bio
    • Media Appearances
  • Kayak Fishing
    • Hank’s Kayak Fishing History
    • Kayak Fishing Posts
    • A Carolina Trail
    • Kayak Fishing for Bowfin
    • Field Reports
  • Bowfin
    • Bowfin Fishing
    • Bowfin Resources
  • Writings
    • Fishing Essays
    • Fishing Book Reviews
    • Product Reviews
    • Welcome to Bowfin Country: The Book
  • Sponsors

Welcome to Bowfin Country

Welcome to Bowfin Country

Tag Archives: Kayak Bass Fishing

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

13 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Henry Veggian in Bio, Essays, Writings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2019 FLW KBF Cup, Dee Zee, FLW Cup, FLW KBF Cup, Hot Springs, Kayak Bass Fishing, kayak fishing, Lake Ouachita, Largemouth Bass, Rick Clunn, Wilderness Systems, Yak Attack

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

Posted by Henry Veggian in Bio, Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bass Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing, Lake Chickamauga

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

Posted by Henry Veggian in Bio, Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2019 KBF National Championship, Bass Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing national Championship, kayak fishing, kbf, nature, water temperature and the bass spawn

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 →

A Bucketmouth for the Bucket List

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by Henry Veggian in Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bowfin Country, Kayak Bass Fishing, KBF 100 Challenge, Largemouth Bass, Toledo Bend

You may be wondering about the title. “Bucketmouth” refers to a Largemouth Bass, a big Largemouth Bass. A “Bucket List” is of course something we keep, checking off an item or two if we are lucky, or we endure. But there is more to this title. There were many options to consider as I drove through the scrub forest, swamp and farmland, watching the horses on ranches run and the slow rivers roll.  And it came to me then because I started thinking about the great Western films in history. I was thinking specifically of a little known Spaghetti Western by an Italian director named Damiano Damiani, a film called A Bullet for the General (1968). Set during a revolution, it is a film loaded with counter-revolutionary plots and surprises of all kinds. Damiani’s film is one of the best Westerns of its time, and it ranks high on my list of favorites. It’s a complicated film about complex people in crazy times, and as I came to the trail head of a complicated trip, it seemed to point in the direction I wanted to go as I tried to answer the question “How do I explain what happened on that lake?”

Continue reading →

Hank’s Essay on Tournament Kayak Fishing in the Fall 2016 KBF Magazine

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by Henry Veggian in Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bass Fishing, Fishing, Fishing tournaments, Kayak Bass Fishing, Kayak Fishing Posts, KBF Magazine, Largemouth Bass

My essay about tournament kayak fishing, from the Fall 2016 issue of KBF Magazine. Click on the 1st link below for the pdf file of the article only. The 2nd link contains the full magazine (the article begins on page 73).

Thank you for reading!

  1. 4 Types of Kayak Tournament Fishing (article only): HV Kayak Tournaments KBF Mag
  2. Full magazine (free download):  Read it here

Birth of a Sport: The Rise of Kayak Fishing

17 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by Henry Veggian in Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts, Writings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

birth of a sport, chad hoover, kayak, Kayak Bass Fishing, kayak fishing national championship, Kayak Fishing Posts, Kayaks, kbf, Kentucky Lake, paddle sports, paris tennesssee

I wrote “Birth of a Sport: Kayak Fishing” in 2016 about the state of kayak fishing after the 1st KBF National Championship. The article was originally published in the spring 2016 issue of Pacific Standard magazine as part of a series entitled “Economy of Scales.”

The file below is a PDF copy of the main text, without the photos included in the original on-line publication. A link to the archived copy, with photos, is included in the file.

a-sport-is-born-bc-site-copyDownload

Link

Henry Veggian on early Spring Topwater Fishing

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Henry Veggian in Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bass Fishing, Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing national Championship, Kayak Fishing Posts, KBF Magazine, Kentucky Lake, Topwater Fishing

Here is the link to my article about topwater fishing on Kentucky Lake, courtesy of Kayak Bass Fishing magazine.

  1. Click here for a pdf file of the article only: HV March KY Lake KBF Mag

2. Click below to download the entire magazine as a pdf file (it’s free!); the article is listed in the contents index.

Follow Hank on Youtube

https://youtu.be/4wrGRk5mnNs

Receive new post notice by email.

Join 1,746 other subscribers

RSS Welcome to Bowfin Country

  • Heating Up as it Cools Down: Reflections on a Hot Streak
    “Don’t take it for granted.” It’s what I kept telling myself after waking up from an unexpected surgical event two …Continue reading →
  • The Extraordinary Complexity of a Fishing Life: A Review of Janet Messineo’s Casting into the Light (2019)
    How many personalities can inhabit a reader? What about a single life? And can they all be captured in a book? Janet Messineo’s Casting into the Light had me wondering about these questions. Continue reading →
  • Kayak Fishing: Wading, Portaging and Fishing in Fast Water
    Introduction How do you navigate fast, shallow water in a fishing kayak? And how do you fish that water? It …Continue reading →
  • Form and Void: A Review of the Wilderness Systems Kayak Krate
    “Everything dies, baby, that’s a factBut maybe everything that dies some day comes back.” That’s a Bruce Springsteen lyric from …Continue reading →
  • Kayak Fishing in Carolina Country Magazine
    As more anglers take up paddles and fish from a kayak, more companies take notice. Outdoors media now regularly feature …Continue reading →

Twitter Feed

My Tweets

Flickr Photos

outdoor life april 2017HV Shearon harris Channel Catfish 6 (5)U lake 7.25 21.75 July 2020 (6)IMG_0175
More Photos

Relevant Web Sites

  • Hank's youtube Channel

Blog Stats

  • 14,719 hits

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Welcome to Bowfin Country
    • Join 36 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Welcome to Bowfin Country
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar