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Portrait of a Victory: Tarheel Lunkers Win 2024 KBTS Championship

When the Kayak Fishing league folded in 2022 after two tumultuous but tantalizing years, many of its anglers were not ready to let go of the league’s team-based format. You can’t blame them – there is great camaraderie when you fish on a team. You travel together, fish together, win and lose together. In a sport that favors isolated activity, team fishing provides communication and community.

In 2023, remnants of the Kayak Fishing League re-constituted as the Kayak Bass Team Series [KBTS]. With a reduced geographic footprint, teams worked with more reasonable travel itineraries. The KBTS currently consists of ten teams spread across three regions (south, east and north). Each region’s teams meet and compete six times during the season. The team that compiles the most points within each region wins a ticket to the championship round, where they face the top team in each of the other two regions. The Virginia based Norfolk Privateers won the first league title in 2023 and KBTS found stability and success thanks to its devoted community of anglers.

And there are few communities quite like the North Carolina kayak fishing community. The Old North state has long been a hotbed for the sport, producing nationally recognized anglers and trail series, hosting large events and setting the pace in its region. And so it should come as no surprise that one of the more successful Kayak Bass Team Series teams hails from North Carolina. And in 2024, they became the top KBTS team.

That team is the Tarheel Lunkers. Managed by team captain Dave Hart, “the Lunkers” (as they are known locally) have a Kayak Bass Fishing Angler of the Year (Wyatt Hammond, 2023) on their roster as well as several other anglers who have had success on the local and regional levels. After several years of team-building that began in the KFL (and carried over to KBTS), Hart built a winner: the Lunkers won their eastern region and proceeded to the championship round on Lake Caddo in early November of 2024.

The Lunkers sent a team that featured Hart, Keith McGee, Wyatt Hammond, Dave Hart, Dontrell Sullivan, Arlie Minton and Rick Morris on the roster for the championship event at Caddo. There, they faced the league’s two other top teams: the Motor City Ambassadors and the SW Hurricanes. The prize: a KBTS championship trophy.

A win at the event would also confirm that the Lunker’s team-building strategy was on the right track. There, on Caddo’s seemingly endless miles of standing cypress, the Lunkers went out and confirmed that they had built not merely a good team, but a dominant one that was capable of winning anywhere.

In order to convey a more accurate sense of their accomplishment, Bastsrail interviewed all six of the Lunkers who competed in the event on Caddo. We kept the question’s simple, and asked about pre- fishing, tournament days and the results. What emerged from the team’s portrait was is a panoramic view of a championship victory, and the interesting story of one particular map.

Preparation

Dave Hart: Going into Caddo, we were hungry. In 2023, the Tarheel Lunkers tied the Norfolk Privateers in the regular season and lost the tie breaker (season’s long total submitted inches) by a mere 11.25”, less than a minimum legal 12” bass. The [Norfolk] Privateers went on to win the Kayak Bass Team Series Championship in 2023, leaving the Lunkers both hungry to be so close to tasting victory but also feeling pressure to represent and keep the trophy within the East Region.

For these reasons, our approach to Caddo was “let’s enjoy the experience on a bucket-list lake we otherwise would be unlikely to visit” all the while knowing we were going to leave no stone unturned and go into the tournament with the utmost confidence. To reach that level: preparation, focus, patience. We arrived as early as eight days prior, we brought waypoints, we had a plan of dividing up the lake, we planned meals, sleeping arrangements; every detail was considered. The pinnacle of preparation was creation a wall-size map of the lake with ability to add stickers associated with catches categorized by size (<18”,18”-20”, 20” +) that were updated throughout the week of practice. Many might think overkill or too hokey, but it ultimately unveiled with undeniable evidence that we would spend our tournament in a very small portion of an otherwise vast sea of monotonous cypress forest, lily pad laden swamps, and early 1900s era industrial oil rigs.

Wyatt Hammond: I got there on Sunday morning and sent the guys a picture and said it looks like Santee – and I hate Santee. I don’t think I caught a fish for the first two or three hours, then I caught some small fish. I finally got a big one a twenty inch or so, at the end of the day. It was random, trying to figure out what was different about the tree you caught.

The war room map was a bunch of separate sheets of paper that we had to tape together and hang on the wall. We marked it with post it notes to see where the fish went. Whenever we went back to the house, we would all go running to the wall and putting stickers on it.

Once somebody got close to a little area, you would see more stickers. And so it got to the point where we were putting stickers on top of stickers and when you had four or five stickers in one area, you knew it was good.

By the night before the tournament, I knew I had found some fish. I had two or three areas, and I knew they held fish. I didn’t know if they would be big, but I knew there were fish in the area. I just didn’t know what would happen the next day. I had seen the Motor City Ambassadors, and they were wearing them out in practice. I knew it was gonna be a shoot-out, and I knew we were gonna catch fish.

Keith McGee: I fished Caddo at the KBF National Championship in 2021, and I fished more of the river than the main lake. This time, I went back and tried to fish history and it wasn’t happening. So I went out and fished the cypress trees, on the Texas side. I started pre-fishing on Monday and fished four solid days; one day was blown out by rain. And we did have a huge map on the wall. We had color-coded stickers for different sizes [laughs].

Arlie Minton: I had fished Caddo three times before, maybe four, but I did fish some history. I also fished new areas, because I knew what to look for. I like the areas that have pads. I went a couple of days before the team did, and I told guys where to go with their motors. I still use a pedal drive, but there were times I was hustling back to the ramp after a long day. We couldn’t start to practice before the prior Saturday, so I practiced a bit longer and covered a lot of it.

When I was there for KBF in 2021, it was the same time of year, so I had some patterns, I fished a buzzbait and some flukes. We all did different stuff. We covered a lot of areas, and the map Dave put up help us. We tried to split it up and that’s we all ended up back in a certain area, because we figured out what wasn’t working. By the third day of pre-fishing we had a pretty good idea and had it dialed in.

Dontrell Sullivan: I was the last one to get there. Wyatt had been there a week and the other guys got there earlier. I only had a day of practice. I hadn’t been to Caddo since the last KBF National Championship there in 2021, and basically like everyone else, I was working off what we heard the Bassmaster [Kayak Series] anglers were doing there recently. I got there, met with the team and discussed it with them. I tried to find some areas they hadn’t touched, to expand on what they had been doing all week. Some of the guys had found bluegill beds, but I didn’t find any where I practiced. But I had caught a couple fish on a chatterbait and a frog. I missed a big one on a frog, and I just decided I would fish that area on tournament day.

Rick Morris: I grew up only about one hundred miles from there [Caddo], so we were in my hood. I had not been to Caddo since I was twelve. I grew up in east Texas, and in college I dated a girl whose folks had a house on Lake Fork. Sam Rayburn, Toledo Bend, those were all in my area. Caddo was a little farther out. The drive wasn;t bad because I know it. will say that Dave Hart about broke me on the way there because we stopped at about four tackle shops. “I want to see this one in Bristol…” three hours and a couple hundred dollars later, and we were there.

Wyatt was there a day before us, and then the other guys came later. Practice went will, but we weren’t finding bigger fish. Even Wyatt wasn’t finding bigger ones. We had a big thunderstorm and we went out later and found a little something. We had a map room where we did strategy. We used it to figure out who went where, according to their strengths. That’s how we figured where the bigger fish were. That map was Dave’s brainchild. Instead of everyone looking at a laptop, he blew up the map and we had stickers. At Caddo, you have a million cypress trees, but that’s how we figured it out, by getting a visual of what was similar in our different areas.

The Tournament

Dontrell Sullivan: I went back to the area on day one where I missed the big one in practice and fished around that area. I didn’t get any bites in the first couple spots, so I went back into an area behind some reeds, where there was an opening. I had missed one there and I got my big one for that day, which was around 20.50”, which was second biggest bass of the weekend. It ate a Booyah pad Crusher Junior. I saw fish blowing up in the pads, but I didn’t get as many bites for the activity I was seeing. I didn’t have my punching rod, so I couldn’t get to them. The rest of my fish were on a chatterbait. I just covered water.

The bite was considerably slower on day two. Me and Wyatt launched at the same ramp, and if he needed some help I could get to him. I only caught one or two scoreable fish, and the fish weren’t hitting the frog. Keith was there, and he was kind of playing defense. He had been there the previous day, and on day two all he had was his pedals.

Keith McGee: We fished two days, and it was the team’s best twenty fish. I did terrible, and I think that rain blew out my pattern. We were on fish, all of us, but not always on the right fish. We caught numbers in practice, but not big fish. We were focused on bluegill beds, but switching over to a shad pattern and other colors made a big difference. We kept trying additional patterns. Dave said in a podcast that when you have six good anglers we can find fish. Wyatt was the one who found the juice. He would have won the tournament by himself. I ended up damaging my motor and catching mostly smaller fish.

Dave Hart: It was go time. Caddo had thrown everything she had at us; stumps breaking motors, high winds, changing weather, vehicle issues, lack of sleep, invasive kayak-choking vegetation, storms limiting practice. But Thursday it all came together in the few afternoon hours we had to fine tune things. Wyatt Hammond had found a likely “winning spot” and with critical and subtle key bait changes, big fish bites, and confidence growing throughout the rest of the team, I presented a challenge to the team that evening.

It all started back in the regular season in June on Sandy River Reservoir in Farmville, VA. Following a visit to the nearby YakAttack headquarters and production facility, the Lunkers put up 199.75” for our best 10 bass, a mere quarter-inch shy of a 20” average for ten fish – a feat I’m not sure had been witnessed in team kayak competition. For the Caddo championship – we could field six anglers in search of the best twenty bass cumulative over the course of two days.

The Challenge I presented was “Guys, if Wyatt is on what he thinks he’s on (a limit of 18” class fish), and with the weather change and key lure changes resulting in big fish the last few hours of practice, is 400 inches out of the realm of possibility?” Despite the hesitation and confidence that 385 inches was the reasonable target for two days, the Lunkers pulled off an unimaginable Day 1 total of 402.25”.

Arlie: I fished two places I found in practice, and the fish were still there. I fished both days in that same vicinity and caught fish both times. We all ended up within a few miles of each other, and the other teams weren’t far off. I just went where the fish were, and so did everyone else. It’s amazing that as big as that lake is, the fish were in the same areas.

I had a good bite on the buzzbait one day, and caught a bunch. I didn’t have much luck on the wacky rig, but caught a few on the finesse worm. I probably caught 15-20 keepers each day, and my biggest was just over 19”. It might have gone on the board for a little bit but we were culling twenty inch-long fish. It’s tough to catch nineteens and twenties consistently. It was crazy to catch a nineteen incher and throw it back in the water.

Rick Morris: On the day of the tournament, Dave and I went to the same area, then Arlie went to a certain ramp and we all spread out. Mots of the other guys launched from the other end of the lake, while Dave and I went to the far end.

On day one, I started picking ‘em up in the trees. They were schooling through there. Dave was catching ‘em from the vegetation, and we were fishing totally different ways. The night before, we had set a goal of an 18” average per fish, but when we saw the numbers Wyatt was producing, we were feeling good. We started telling each other to cull 18” fish. At 9 o’clock on day 2, we texted and the answer was “We are culling 20”.” It’s tough to throw a 19.5” bass back, but we were trying to hit those bigger fish. I think my largest on day two was a 22.5”.

Keith McGee: There was a moment after day one, when we gathered in the parking lot. Dave drives in, the last one to arrive. He parks and walks to us, and halfway there, he let out a Ric Flair type “Wooooo!” We thought right there that it would take a miracle to beat us. It was amazing, but it wasn’t like winning a tie-breaker in the last five minutes. The first day was the more dramatic day. We set a goal to have no fish under twenty inches, and we almost made it on day two.

On day two, I had to use my pedals, but I kept people out of Wyatt’s area because I couldn’t travel as far, so people would see two of us in that area. But I also hit another stump and bent my fins, so I really was stuck. I would let the wind blow me around and throw a chatterbait. That would not happen in an individual tournament.

Wyatt: I fished a technique that many people don’t use on Caddo. It was in shallow water, and I was shaking off fish in practice. The morning of the tournament I caught a few on a frog near some bluegill beds. The bite just died, and then I started fishing shallow again. It went wild. I was catching a fish every ten casts. And they were all quality fish. I had been shaking off bites thinking they were smaller fish. After about eleven in the morning on day one, I knew it was a special bite. I was sitting there and laughing. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My best five measured 108”. It was the best day I have ever had in a tournament.

Dave Hart: I can only speak for myself, but I imagine at lines out day one we were all speechless, shocked, elated, yet somehow still nervous about what had just occurred. After lines out, I rounded a main lake point and hit spot-lock to wait for teammate Rick Morris to make the run back to our ramp. As the shock wore off, the full wave of emotions hit like a freight train. We had done it. We won. No way the 2^nd place team closes the 44-inch gap we ended with Day 1. All the hard work and preparation, not just for the event, not just for the season, but to be so close the year prior, the work to salvage the league and concept we love and enjoy, to overcome adversity just to maintain, to know we did it for our comrades on the Virginian Anglers and Norfolk Privateers.

The Victory

Rick Morris: In any tournament, you get to the last hour or so and you check back to see what’s going on. I went back through another area to see if I could get one more 20” bass on the board. I was looking at the clock, and when it was over, I was heading back to the ramp. I just stopped in the middle of the lake and got choked up. Dave came around the corner. I was just floating and thinking “we pulled this thing off, against the caliber of guys we fish against….” Dave pulls up and he looks at me and we both get choked up, and we sat there a minute and tried to process what happened. We slowly puttered back to the launch. It was quiet. And we are back at the house and Dave pulls up and hollers, and we all woke up. I hadn’t been that emotional since high school football. When you fish an individual tournament and win it feels good, but when you win as a team you get to share it. Dave was our general, Wyatt was the technical advisor and we were all soldiers. It was a team win.

Wyatt: This win was different for me. Gerald Swindle said a few years ago that in bass fishing, you don’t have a pit crew. If you fail, it’s you alone. But with the team we eliminated parts of the lake, and I would have missed those fish. We broke down that lake, so without the other guys we would not have won it. It is nice to win tournaments, but with this we had a lot of support from back home and a celebration at the house.

Arlie: I had a good time. I was excited for us going into this year. It’s nice to have all the different skill levels on the team because it allows you to fish your strengths. We were able to do our thing and everyone did their part. With the team, we shared knowledge, and it’s interesting to learn things, because I don’t fish like anyone else and nobody else fishes like me. For example, I am not a big drop shot fisherman, and learning that technique, or just hearing about it, is really good.

On Friday, when we decided we had a shot, we felt pretty good. We had a pretty good lead. But culling 20” fish is hard to do, so we didn’t know for sure. But when Brad [Case] brought the trophy over, I was excited. I couldn’t believe it. I was worn out. I was drained mentally and physically, because we didn’t know for sure that we won. You never know if someone is sandbagging. It took a while for it to sink in. It took a couple of days for me, maybe until I got back home. I still go back and look at the fish we caught.

Keith McGee: It was a great year, and we really gelled as a team. We got really good at sharing information in our conversations leading up to the tournaments. We would break down patterns and share it with everybody. It was a complete team effort, from top to bottom, in all the tournaments I was associated with.

Dontrell Sullivan: We’ve been with KBTS since it was KFL [Kayak Fishing League], and we fell short of the playoffs, or we missed chances. It felt great to come out on top. In our region, there is no such thing as homefield advantage because the Virginia guys know our waters and we know their water. To dominate like we did down there felt great. We heard some teams from the original KFL are coming back, and we all love the format. That is gonna bring them back. Everyone who has been a part of it loves it.

Dave Hart: For me, our championship experience on Caddo Lake was a culmination of our entire season’s body of work and is a testament to the team’s focus and preparation throughout. The number of variables to consider when approaching team tournaments far outweigh those of a solo competition; from choosing a roster, procuring accommodations, to acknowledging sponsor support, those are just a few of the things to consider even prior to the regular preparation and pre-fishing strategies.

All of the effort was worth it and the tears and pure elation of joy rushed out of me like never before. Because of team, because of fellow competitors you respect and call friends, because its not about the money, because it finally scratched that itch of regaining the nostalgic joy of winning your childhood little league season, it just hits different. It’s all worth it – to know you’re part of a team and the other nine guys have your back, and you have theirs. This was the ultimate reward.

Additional Info

The 2024 Tarheel Lunkers are Matt Dunn, Mark Glende, Wyatt Hammond, Dave Hart, Keith McGee, Arlie Minton, Rick Morris, Steve Perry, Dontrell Sullivan, and Mike Wimmer

The Kayak Bass Team Series is sponsored by: Amped Outdoors; YakAttack; Fish or Die Bait Company; TourneyX.

The Tarheel Lunkers are sponsored by: Brilliant Equipment Services; Fire Connections Inc.; Pinnacle Architecture; Elite Exteriors; Double C Masonry, Concrete, & General Contracting LLC; Collab Resume; OutCast Fishing Co.; Cedar Creek Outdoor Center; Landon’s Towing & Recovery; Cape Fear River Adventures, LLC.

Dontrell Sullivan is a member of the Old Town National Fishing Team, and the BizzBaits and Carolina Waters Pro Staffs.

Arlie Minton is sponsored by Thomasville Lawn and Garden.

Wyatt Hammond is sponsored by Old Town.

To learn more about the Kayak Bass Team Series, go to https://kayakbassteamseries.com/

To see standings from KBTS events, see: https://tourneyx.com/app/category/kayak-bass-team-series/archive

For complete standings from Caddo, see: https://tourneyx.com/leaderboard/standings/kayak-bass-team-series-match-championship-2024

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Hank Veggian is a multi-species freshwater kayak angler. He is a member of the Jackson Kayak Fishing Team, Ketch Products Fishing Team and Get Outdoors Pedal and Paddle Pro Staff. His writings on fishing have been published in numerous magazines. He has written for the KBF and KAS websites, and is a former KFL angler.