JHoss

Ned Rigs and big swims/glides. I still carry them, but they're techniques I've pigeon-holed for very specific situations. Neds only come out after I've given up on all other baits and big swims/glides only come out when I have a limit, really need a kicker fish, and everything else is only producing smaller fish.

Sounds like you're getting DQ'd if you ever enter a kayak derby. LOL. My work phone and computer do that sometimes- something with firewalls or proxy servers or something makes it think I'm at HQ.

Kayak derbies typically do a Catch, Photo, Release format and you have to enable location on your phone when taking the photo. That way there's a time and location stamp to know it was taken on the tournament waters during tournament hours. In the photo, you have to display an identifier code that's only released the day of the event. On some larger body of waters there could be 20+ different launch locations, so it could still be hard to prove someone was on the right lake without the location stamp for a situation like that too.

Pull the plug and hit the throttle! This thread reminds me that I should probably replace the CO2 cartridge I accidentally deployed 18 months ago.

If the TD had been well-respected and trusted, perhaps people wouldn't have cared. There were 4-5 other guys who fished the same lake as me and none were pleased with what had happened. I just ended up being the most outspoken about it. The TD in my current trail is well-respected and trusted. A couple times this year he made calls to change venues or shorten tournament hours the day before due to high water or heat concerns. While many of us would've preferred to keep things as scheduled, there were no real complaints, which likely speaks to your point about a trusted TD being able to do more without scrutiny.

Just realizing we have a hunting page on here. It's muzzleloader season in VA right now. I've been out for 5 sits so far and have passed on 30-40 bucks that were in range and maybe another 10-20 does. The bucks have been chasing pretty good lately, but the only one close to a shooter never got within 225 yards- about 25 yards further than I'm comfortable with that gun. My phone is getting quite full of videos of small 8s walking under the stand. But the rut is wrapping up, so I reckon the buck sightings will start dwindling. My last sit was this past Saturday afternoon and gun comes in this Saturday. Knowing I wouldn't shoot the muzzleloader again this year, I decided to whack a doe at last light if I had one in range. Wouldn't you know it, I had a few to pick from and wound up settling on a nice eater doe at 103 yards. She may have gone two steps. We moved to 4.5 mostly wooded acres last December. I've got a stand in the back I sat in a few times late last season without seeing a deer. I need to get my cams back up this weekend to see if they've already gone nocturnal this year or if it's worth getting some sits in before work. They run dogs in this county and that seems to drive them nocturnal as soon as gun comes in.

I've used them on a T Rig when the water is real cold and I want something super subtle. But 95% of the time they're on a weightless wacky, 4% weightless T Rig, and 1% weighted T Rig.

Unreliable. And cost prohibitive for an event that pays out 1st place at a few hundred bucks. Kayak events tend to be harder to regulate for a few reasons. There's usually multiple launches because you can't cover a whole lake from one launch when most guys max out at 3-4mph. Because of there being no centralized take off and return location, it's possible for people to fish entirely different bodies of water if they don't have location data to show where the photo was taken. Never heard of a poly being done for a kayak event, but it's entirely possible they may at the national trail levels. Honestly, it's a shame they have to make it so complicated to weed out a few bad apples. If you really want your head to spin, look up some of the way guys have cheated in these events in the past. Illegal measuring boards, cutting tails off to make fish shorter/longer, sharing fish with a friend, etc etc.

I came close to sinking my NuCanoe Pursuit in Back Bay a few years ago trying to cross the main bay in similar conditions. In hindsight, I wish I had taken the longer route and stuck close to shore the whole way so that I could've gotten out in waist deep water if needed. Not sure if that's an option on Fork, but something to consider next time you're in a similar weather situation.

Agreed on that, but it's hard to find someone willing to devote the time to running a trail and not fish it. The jon boat trail I'm currently fishing is the first time I've seen it done well, but that's because the guy running it is more interested in the comradery than winning. He doesn't mind getting off the water early to set up scales and there's never been any concern of him using his position to help himself. I have major issue with kayak TDs or judges fishing their events because of the CPR format. Every angler has to submit there catch with location on, so the TD gets GPS coordinates for every fish caught. There was a lot of smoke around this guy stealing spots, but nothing ever proven.

As a whole, I had a pretty solid year. But it certainly had its ups and downs. The first 1/3 of the year I caught a decent mix of size and numbers. When summer hit, I could find a couple good bites but rarely a limit. In late summer/early fall, I went on a two month stretch where I could catch 20-50 fish a day but didn't put my hands on a fish over 2lbs. By mid-October I was catching ok numbers and ok size but nothing giant.

I'm with you. Most of the times when fishing with friends or family, there's a small wager on the line. Sometimes it's $1 for the first, most, and biggest. Sometimes its the loser wearing a dress on the next trip. Would've done that as well, but they blocked me from posting on the page when they decided to ban me. Other anglers figured it out pretty quickly and, from what I've been told by those guys, attendance was way down after that year. Maybe it had something to do with the ethics of the guys running it... I had already committed a fair bit of time and money that year, so I just wanted to fish the last couple events before moving on for good. I've enjoyed my time with the current jon boat trail I fish now. Most of the guys are pretty solid.

Fortunately, not all trails are like this one. The trail I've fished the last 2 years has been completely drama-free. *knocks on wood* For some reason, there seems to be far more drama in tournament kayak bass fishing than anywhere else in fishing from my experience. You would think with less money invested and less at stake, you would find the least amount of drama. P.S. I'd still fish tournaments even if there was no money on the line.

That wound up being one of the last events I fished with them. They ended up banning me for "slander" when I questioned the integrity behind this decision on their Facebook page. The real kicker is that they didn't even have the stones to tell me I had been banned, instead posting an updating AOY standings with my name scratched out on the Facebook page. Even better, next year, those TDs will be joining the jon boat trail I've been fishing the last two years. That should be interesting.

While I have never fought a GT, I have landed many others in the Jack family both with rod and reel and spearfishing. I can say that they all are pound-for-pound some of the hardest fighting fish out there. I once speared an amberjack that was in the 120lb class off the Chesapeake Light Tower. He barely reacted when the spear hit him and slowly began swimming off. After about 30 seconds of kicking towards the surface but not getting there, I looked up and realized I was being pulled to the bottom despite all of my strength and effort. The fish eventually wrapped the gun and floatline up at the bottom of the tower in about 50' FOW where we spent the next hour alternating dives to try and recover it until a 12+ tiger shark came in and claimed that fish as its own. It seems, in my experience, that some saltwater fish tend to be more strategic about using cover to break you off. Sure, I've lost plenty of bass that tangled me up in a blowdown they were hanging in, but I don't have any specific memories of one making a run for cover a reasonable distance away as if they knew they could use it to break me off. Cobia, for example, have a knack for this and will run straight to another boat's anchor line 100 yards away and wrap you in that as if they planned it from the get go. I'll never forget the 100+ lb cobia that did that to me in Hatteras Inlet when I was about 14. It's almost like the jump he made as he was breaking me off on a neighboring boats anchor line was him giving me the one-finger salute and thanking me for the eel he ate. Like @king fisher mentioned with the cuberas, sometimes when cobia are holding tight to a buoy or bridge piling, all you can do is lock down your drag and try to pull them away with the big motors.

Here's the scenario: A local kayak trail schedules a regular season derby where you can choose from 5 different 1,000-1,500 acre lakes. This information is given to the members when the schedule was announced months prior to the event. The two Tournament Directors actively fish the trail. At the online captain's meeting that takes place the night before the event, the TD announces that they are adding a series of 12 "lakes" ranging in size from 3-50 acres to the eligible waters. The TD who announces this goes on to fish these tiny lakes and finishes in the top 3. He claims to have not pre-fished these lakes since they made the decision to add them roughly two weeks before the pre-tournament meeting when it was announced. Is this cheating?

Just like bass fishing in general, every angler approaches tournament strategy in their own way. I try to account for every possible scenario and plan accordingly. I can't control what another angler does, but if I beat them to a spot first thing, the balls in my court for at least that spot. I had a tournament earlier this year on a 1,000 acre lake with relatively little structure. There is one saddle that everyone knows about. I chose to run to that saddle first thing and camp on it for a couple hours- I caught a limit and kept other boats from being able to fish it until I had worked it over to my satisfaction. I even heard other anglers grumbling as they went past that I was still on the same spot. I finished top 4 and dumped what would've been the winning fish boat side. I can't say I would've done that well with a different strategy. While you may not know what other anglers are doing on a given day, with experience you can have a pretty good idea what it will take to win or place. Then you can use that inference to decide if you need to chase big bites or look for 2 pounders. You even hear stories of high level pros playing the strategy game in practice. They find a hidden gem and have to decide if they want to camp on it to keep others away or stay far away from it to avoid drawing attention to it. If you really want to get into you could even look at things like sharing info (ie: Johnson brothers or Wheeler and DC). The "strategy" of sharing info with a friend may help you in some events and hurt you in others.

In those kayak days I often had one rod dedicated to a really obnoxious bait I could throw a mile like a 190 Whopper Plopper. If a glitter boat invaded my space, I stopped fishing and started bombing that thing right across their bow until they got the hint and moved on. I disagree. I think you have to think of it as competing against the fish AND the other anglers. I'd also argue that PGA players have to compete against the course and the field of competitors. Figuring out how to catch fish is only one part of the formula for winning a tournament. I find that I often have to out-strategize the other anglers with things like when to hit a certain spot. If I'm hitting every spot after multiple other boats hit them, then my odds go down. If I can be the first person to fish each spot, my odds probably go up. Most of our local lakes we compete on our less than 1,500 acres, so I may have to consider what other anglers have already shown the fish and give them something different. On the bigger lakes and rivers we fish, we still have a HP restriction, so now I have to decide if I stay close and maximize my time fishing or do I sacrifice half a day to run to a spot with no pressure. I've said before on here that figuring out the puzzle is part of bass fishing I love. Adding a tournament to the mix is like going from a 500 piece puzzle to a 1000 piece puzzle.

While most of your friends rules are nonsense in my opinion, I find the idea of retrieving down stream to be more effective than the opposite more often than not. I don't believe its because bait fish only swim down stream, but because ambush predators like smallmouth typically hold facing up current or in an eddy facing the faster moving water. And I believe you're more likely to get a bite when presenting a bait into or across a fish's face instead of coming from behind it. I recently fished a largemouth tournament on a river with elevation driven current. I finished 3rd over some guys who usually get the better of me and I, largely, attribute that success to fishing into the current and retrieving with the current. I fished one stretch for about an hour with the eventual Anglers of the Year in the exact same area. They only caught 6 fish the entire day while I caught 6 in the single hour we shared an area. The biggest difference I observed was that I made it a point to fish into the current all day while they mostly fished with the current.

This is another aspect of tournament fishing I hadn't considered as a pro or con, but now realize could go either way depending on the person. I love the peace and tranquility of being on the water or in the woods, and I still get to experience that for 95% of a tournament day. Some folks probably love the sound an ol 2-Stroke 250 makes at WOT. To each their own. We do shotgun starts in the trail I primarily fish and that has become something I really enjoy. Maybe its just another opportunity for my competitiveness to come through or maybe its just fun going fast. Maybe I would like it far less if I didn't have one of the faster boats on the trail. One thing I bet 99% of us here would agree to dislike is conflict on the water. And in some ways I suspect that may be more prevalent in tournaments. But on the flip side, the most head-scratching invasions of space or violations of basic etiquette have all come from non-tournament anglers... at least since I've been in the boat. When I was fishing from kayaks, the worst violators were glitter boat tournament anglers who thought they were more entitled to a spot than me in my plastic kayak.

A problem I've been trying to solve for years. I think I've finally landed on the solution that works for me. I keep the plastics in their original packaging and put them in heavy duty zippered bags I got for cheap off Amazon. I debated between sorting by brand or type of bait and decided its easier to find what I need when sorted by type of bait. So I have a bag for craws, creature baits, bugs, beavers, senkos, finesse worms, mag worms, flukes, pintails, ned/drop shot baits, paddletails,etc. Then I have one bag as my "day bag" where I put the baits/colors I expect I may rotate through that day. I legitimately carry 50+ pounds of plastics in my 1448 and can find the specific one I need in about 30 seconds or less every time. This system also makes it very easy to empty the tackle out of my boat if I'm fishing the saltwater and don't want to risk salt intrusion to my bass tackle. I have tried many hard sided storage solutions and am not a fan of how much space gets wasted in my boat. This system allows me to utilize nearly every inch of the tacke storage on my boat.

Man, I had a feeling this thread would get some action, but I didn't expect 4 pages in just a day. It seems that the title I chose may have been a bit more provocative than intended. A better title may have been "Why are bass your favorite species to target?" I've enjoyed reading some of the stories about experiences that got people hooked and the discussions I've had with others to better understand why they love bass fishing so much without competing. It's made me think about how I got here to the Bass Obsession. Like many, my dad got me into the outdoors- hunting and saltwater fishing mostly. We live on the Chesapeake Bay and folks who live here tend to prefer the salt over the small lakes we have nearby. I imagine if I had grown up on the shores of Lake Guntersville, I likely would've been a bass head all along. It makes me wonder if things would've been different if I had gotten hooked on these fish sooner. Maybe I would've fished on a collegiate bass team and be fishing bigger tournaments now. Maybe some of y'all wouldn't ever fish for bass if you grew up on the salt. We all got here different ways, but we've found common ground with this fish that's found nearly everywhere. Where I stand today, I can 100% say that I would not be as obsessed with bass fishing if it weren't for tournaments. I would still bass fish occasionally, but my angling would be far more diversified across fresh and salt. The melding of a sport (fishing) I've always loved with the competition I've always craved, is the perfect hobby for me at this stage in my life when I can't compete on a baseball diamond or football field at the same level that I did a decade ago. That same competitiveness is what drives me to become a better fisherman and fuels the fire to spend too many hours fishing or learning about bass fishing. If I was just a fun fisherman, I wouldn't care if I was an average angler or great angler on a given day. But as with everything I've been passionate about in my life, I want to be the best. When I compete against a field of others it helps me check on that progress and not winning motivates me to keep working so hard at perfecting my craft. It's awesome that chasing bass can mean so many things for so many people, and there's no wrong answer to why. The same way we all have our favorite techniques to catch these fish, we all have our favorite reason for why we chase them.

Heck yeah, I get this! I fish and hunt because my dad took me when I was young and those are some of my fondest memories. I have a 4 year old daughter who has the attention span and interest to fish for about 20 minutes, but I'm so hopeful that she'll be my fishing buddy sooner or later. I can see that. I imagine if I was fishing for a living, it would suck a lot of the fun out of it. You hear a lot of the pro guys talk about that. But spending $40-50 every other weekend to fish a local tournament doesn't put that kind of pressure on it. If I win, I cover my costs for the next couple events. If I lose, I'm out an hour's wage in exchange for an exciting 8 hrs on the water and hopefully a few new lessons learned.

Can't argue with a fear of the ocean keeping you from fishing saltwater. I still won't eggs to this day because of an allergic reaction and anaphylactic shock when I was 3. But now that you mention it, it is odd that the numerous brushes with death in the saltwater never had the same affect. I get the expense side of things, but personally find myself spending way more on bass tackle than saltwater. Perhaps its simply because I bass fish more these days, but I feel confident going saltwater fishing with a tray or two of lures whereas I feel hopeless without 70 lbs of tackle for bass.

I would say there are more bass tournaments per year than other species, but it depends on your definition of major. Do you think the guys who pay $200,000 to enter a marlin tournament where the winning purse is in the millions consider 100 bass anglers paying $5,000 to enter for a chance at $100,000 major? Its all about perspective. I think the widespread nature of bass tournaments is likely due to their geographic range being greater than just about every other species you listed. Hard to do a national snakehead trail when they inhabit 25% of the country. Where I live speckled trout tournaments are somewhat popular, but only in the fall when the bulk of the population migrates through our waters. In the summer we have flounder, drum, and cobia tournaments. None of those species are here long enough to have consistent angling opportunities or tournaments throughout the year. There aren't many species who fit the bill of being available in most of the country throughout most of the year, so bass have leg (or fin) up over most species in that regard. But I agree the puzzle is a huge draw to those who enter tournaments, those who watch tournaments, and those who fish for fun. Figuring out the puzzle each day on the water is a close second to the competition in terms of my favorite aspects of bass fishing. I NEVER said that only tournament anglers should fish for bass. I never even said that there was anything lesser about being a casual angler than a tournament angler nor do I believe that. I'm not the kind of tournament angler who would encroach on someone who was fun fishing- they have just as much right to the water and the fish as I do. I'm just bored at work and curious what others find so obsessing. It seems like the caveat that I didn't mean to offend anyone was justified considering so many people got offended by me simply wondering why they favor bass fishing over one of the other 100 species of game fish in North America. Some folks took time to explain that its a certain aspect of the chase, or a singular experience, or limited opportunity that makes them focus on bass... others got offended and replied in such a manner. I'm just glad to be able to have a chat about bass fishing when I should be working.