News

Spring 2020 Tournament Season Is Here (Again…)

With the entire bass fishing scene on lock down for the last couple of months, the welcomed relief of getting back to live regional and national trail action has anglers excited and ready to go! Looking back on the last couple of months, a lot has happened in the competitive kayak angling scene, covered previously by Basstrail.

Social distancing, a term we are tired of hearing that has kept us from holding live events across the nation by both local restrictions and lack of hospitality with hotels and campgrounds closed throughout the country. Traveling was not an option, work for folks ranged from shifting to home, being laid off or working overtime in the medical industry. For some in the angling world, this was a nightmare to lose the ability to meet up with friends and foes to compete and socialize on the water. For others, it was a chance to trot down the road of innovation for support of the pandemic, companies such as YakAttack transforming its manufacturing to assist in needed personal protection equipment. For others, it was time to test out online tournament formats that until now seemed too gimmicky and complicated to bother.

5 Live

The first foray into the realm of creative gambling came from Scott Beutjer, Host of Westbrook Wednesdays and the Weigh-In with the new 5 Live series. The format of having groups of top anglers compete on waters of choice across the country for 5 weekends to each have a winner take all purse and championship birth. The anglers all battling live on Facebook to catch the biggest 5 bass in a short 2 hour period was impressive to watch. Angling skill and the ability to stay calm under the pressure while being distracted by live conversations was something great to watch. These anglers always having 8 hours of fishing time to themselves in seclusion all transformed themselves into talkative fishing machines.

At the end of the event, some wild shakeups with Facebook pushes for angler’s to win a second chance, we ended up witnessing 7 anglers battle it out for the championship. With the format now set up for 2 days, we watched the leader board bounce around until there was a definitive winner, the one and only Cody Milton fishing for NuCanoe becomes the first 5 Live Champion!

Kayak Bass Bracket Tour

The next new best thing to come along was the Kayak Bass Bracket Tour (KBBT) with hosts Greg Nosar, Todd Jacob and Marcus Cotes. Dakota Lithium and Basstrail angler, Eric Nelson, battled through a couple weeks of the bracket to get a first hand experience into how this bracket system would work out. Speaking with Basstrail, Eric stated “The pressure was unreal because you have no idea what the fishing is like where your competitor is. My bite was tougher than anticipated after putting over 92 inches up on practice day, and not knowing how an angler from another state is doing, or what body of water he was on, brought a new lever of pressure I wasn’t expecting.”

In this format, you only have to beat the angler in your bracket to move on. Regardless of how well or not other anglers do, your goal is to beat this one angler. “When the guys at KBBT called me towards the end of the day, I was fiercely focused on culling more fish, which I was slowly improving on throughout the day” Eric continued, “Marcus Cotes seemed surprised at the sound of disappointment in my voice, but it was because I didn’t know how well or not my competitor was doing, and being ten or more inches below what I felt I needed to win the round I was starting to get anxious!”

Fast forward to round of 32 anglers, with the “Sweet 16” round to follow the next day, a new challenge with the bracket came up - the inability to pick your own water. With both the local Carolina Kayak Anglers event as well as the Kayak Bass Fishing (KBF) Mid-Atlantic Trail Series event on Randleman and High Rock, there was no more using a comfort lake close to home for the event. “Finding productive water that had big fish was a challenge, I knew I needed to put up at least mid to high 80’s to move on to the next round, and I would have to be sharing the water with competitors from the live events” Eric added, “I found the fish with some tough conditions, and it just wasn’t the number I needed with only 83.75 inches and Jason Starley was able to put up 86.75 inches and won the day!”

KBF Mid-Atlantic Trail at Randleman / High Rock

Across the country a few KBF trail events kicked off including the Mid-Atlantic’s Randleman / High Rock events along with the hosting club Carolina Kayak Anglers holding a simultaneous event on Saturday. The event was re-activated and expanded into 2 separate events with one on Saturday and one on Sunday. This gave anglers the ability to double up on Trail points in one weekend, a solution that helps with the inability to travel for a lot off people with restrictions due to the open phases across the region, and to make up for missed opportunities during the stay at home orders.

Practice days that week turned into flooding conditions throughout the region with multiple inches of rain dumping in the region. “I was able to find fish before and during the rain, although the bite was a bit strange and slow” Dakota Lithium and Basstrail angler, Eric Nelson commented, “I was confident I had the right areas picked out, but I had no idea what tournament day was going to be like”

The Facebook Live Captain’s Meeting gave all the anglers a heads up with what the flooding conditions were, and it seemed to have stabilized and the water started to drop. “I noticed the creek behind where I was staying dropped a couple feet on Friday, so I knew the fish were probably going to be even more finicky than on Thursday” Eric added. At the end of the First event, Eric had won the event with a tie-breaking situation going in his favor against Jody Queen from West Virginia. “To come to an event full of sticks from the Mid-Atlantic region such as Jody Queen, Casey Reed and Cory Dryer and local anglers Joey Sullivan and others, and take the win, was unbelievable!”

Day 2 was won by Jody Queen with Cory Dreyer not far behind in second place. The event entries had dissipated for day 2, as it did for other multi-day events in the South. Some of the drop in attendance due to tough fishing conditions, and some from folks needing to take a drive home.

The 2020 Kayak national tournament season’s late start has come with some exciting new additions and now the anglers are ready to roll to the next event! Whether its a live event or online challenge, Spring is open and ready for business, again! The Hobie BOS will be back in action on Kentucky Lake June13th-14th, and the next B.A.S.S. Nation Kayak Series event will be on the Mississippi River on August 15th.