Tag Archives: Largemouth Bass

Check My Stats: Why Mack is the Best Kayak Bass Fishery in North Carolina

23 Wednesday Apr 2025

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Hypothesis

This article asks the question: which is the best Largemouth Bass fishery for kayak tournaments in central North Carolina?

Let’s take a closer look at the question. First, it asks which is the best bass fishery for kayak tournaments. Therefore, the lake must be 1) publicly accessible to kayak launches and 2) able to accommodate a reasonable number of kayaks. So, small lakes and ponds are out of the question. One might also eliminate much larger lakes (I won’t). The majority of kayak tournaments are held on mid-to-large sized lakes in the state. Let’s say 1,000 surface acres/50 shoreline miles and up. That’s our general range.

Now, the second part of the hypothesis. The question introduces a valuation (“best”) that can have multiple quantitative measurements (not to mention qualitative explanations). There is no way to prove which lake is “best” in a definitive way. Do you measure weight? Length? Year class? Forage base? Catch frequency? Harvest numbers? To do so, you would have to sample and survey every mid-sized public lake in the state at the same time, crunch data, analyze the numbers, create charts and spread sheets, explain your methods, etc. You would need more scientists, electro-shock boats and funds for such a project than any entity currently has, and by the time you finished the job the lakes would all have changed.

The best you get is an estimate. And you know what? That’s still pretty good. After review of five years of evidence (2020-2024), I believe the answer is clear.

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Learning the Water: Kayak Tournament Fishing at Lake Mackintosh

16 Sunday Jul 2023

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Learning the Water: Kayak Tournament Fishing at Lake Mackintosh

I. The Question

Some lakes are like old schoolmates or a friendly teacher who lives nearby; we just don’t see them all too often. When we do see them, we feel good. We leave after the visit and ask “Why don’t I visit more frequently?” Perhaps it’s because if we did, the magic might wear off. We would have too many good times and the rest of life would pale by comparison. In short, we’d become spoiled.

Or it might be that no matter how many times we go back, we always have a good time. The friendship gets stronger and every day is a new adventure. Even the quiet days are memorable. That’s being spoiled, too, in a good way.

Mackintosh, I confess, has spoiled me in the latter way. As we will see, some important kayak tournament fishing moments in North Carolina happened on the lake – and not only for me. The lake has shaped me and us like a good teacher does – it forms us, challenges us and makes learning a pleasure.

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Fish Psych 101: Reflections on a Hot Streak (part II)

05 Friday May 2023

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Overview

During the darkest hour of the recent pandemic, I started reading articles about sports psychology. It began with an article on the BBC news website about a phenomenon known as “Quiet Eye” that can be identified in certain elite athletes (I’ll have more to say about that in another post). It continued from there through sports journalism, scientific studies and science writing in various media. In short, I started to wonder how current research and concepts might apply to tournament fishing.

For example, I started asking questions about what’s happening in my body when I am fishing. How is physical exhaustion related to mental fatigue? What are my eyeballs doing in relation to what my hands are doing? Can I identify patterns of movement and thought – decisions I make – from my body language and movements in the countless hours of video I record? What is my brain doing? I began noticing things, and I started writing them up.

This second installment in my “Fish Psych 101” series is actually a sequel to the first article I wrote on the topic, which I posted last season.  In that article, I began asking questions about how types of brain activity might correlate with results in tournament fishing.

Here, I dive into the recent tournaments since that streak in late 2022, waters I fished, and my general mindset. I may be starting to elaborate a theory about “confidence” that goes against the grain of what I hear in most conversations about tournament fishing. What I know for certain is that something dramatic has changed in how I approach the water, mentally speaking.

As before, I am elaborating basic concepts and attempting to summon questions more than I am deciphering answers. At times, I feel like the sorcerer’s apprentice in Goethe’s poem, and I can’t quite figure out how to control the spell. Nonetheless, I make the cast.

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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

The 2010’s: A Kayak Fishing Decade in Review

30 Monday Dec 2019

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When you are young, the world is your private pond. It’s stocked with fat fish and they bite every lure you throw.  You can sit on the bank and eat chips, sleep and dream of adventures you had and will never have. You can wake up and dive in the pond or chase your friends around the banks until the wind gets winded. Youth is a fork and the world is your mussel.

Before you know it, you are tired, stressed and it’s all gone. If you are lucky, you have a job and your health. If you are really fortunate you still sneak out to fish sometimes and forget your troubles. The mussels aren’t quite as abundant and they cost more, but they still taste really good.

We are closing a historic decade in the artful sport of fishing. It will forever be known as the decade during which kayak tournament fishing went from a local hobby to national and international stature. The sport’s business side has blossomed, the media have portrayed us in a good light and there are more tournament options than one can count. There are kayaks on every lake, many with rods sticking out of them and looking like antennae farms floating on some extra-terrestrial settlement. In only a few short years, it appears a viable model for the sport has emerged: the technology has improved, state wildlife agencies have noticed us, competition formats have settled into some degree of normalcy and people are out there fishing and having fun, whether in tournaments or otherwise. Hell, even the venerated B.A.S.S. organization has adopted us. Who saw that coming?

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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?”

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A Bucketmouth for the Bucket List

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

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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?”

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