My second kayak tournament of the year was this past weekend at El Dorado lake in Southeast Kansas. El Dorado is Spanish for "The Big Wind". Okay not really, but I've never seen this lake without whitecaps I don't think and this weekend wasn't any better. It was super low, so the limited areas was even more limited than usual. I'd heard through the grapevine that my favorite areas to fish, the creeks, had almost no water in them and were a huge hassle to even try to fish, so I was going to focus on mainlake stuff. Like usual, when I got to the lake and was setting up my tent, I put out my catfish rods, which found a nice blue. I was excited about that, until it promptly removed a couple good sized chunks of skin from my hand as I tried to release it. Those spots would be sore and uncomfortable the rest of the weekend.
I prefished for 10 or 11 hours. I started the morning by immediately dropping my pliers in the lake. I caught 4 or 5 little bass along with several accidental bycatches before I did what I told myself all day not to do, I went to the area I planned on fishing. I guess I was hurting bad to catch a fish, because I caught a 15" smallmouth pretty fast, then another, then this one.
Kicking myself for leaning on this one, I was grumbling while I dropped my bait back in the water to fix a loop, and it took off again with a 17" largemouth. I finally bent the hook all the way in on my Ned rig and had several more swim off with it but not hook up. I decided to see if they'd eat a glide bait. Of course I couldn't protect them from the hooks, and yes they would literally try to eat it.
So I knew they were there but I ended the night just fuming at myself for sticking a mid 80 inch bag in practice on a tough lake.
Tournament day was blowing 25mph at launch and got windier as the day went on. There was white caps in the small marina I was sharing with 12-15 other kayaks. Took a minute to get my first bite, which was only 13". Second bite was 8 3/4". 3rd bite was 14", and I broke my brand new rod on the hookset, my first fish I got to catch on it. The day never got much better. I caught a small limit and culled up an inch here, half and inch there, but never caught any kicker fish like the day before. Finished in 9th with 77" and found out that 1st, 2nd, and 3rd all fished in the creeks, should have trusted my instincts there. I did catch all 3 species of bass, which is pretty rare in Kansas, so that was neat.
Last night I got off work a little early and it was nice and cloudy with storms on the way, so I got the okay from Mrs. Blue and asked my boys if they wanted to fish the pond down the street for some bluegills for a short trip before the storms moved in. My youngest wasn't interested, but my oldest jumped at the chance. The only thing more eager than he was, was the bluegills. Not sure how many we caught before we had to call it because lightning started rumbling, but it was a bunch. I missed the first dozen bites I had on my flyrod before I finally looked at my fly, the hook was bent so awkwardly there was no way I would have ever landed a fish. My son was talking some serious smack with about a 10-0 advantage on me, but I made a furious comeback once I had a functioning hook.
There's some huge hybrids in this pond. I caught one of the more average ones but she appeared to be about to pop with eggs.
Ended the night on back to back doubles.