Capitol City Kayak Fishing Tournament Series

It was a fishing packed weekend for me.  Fly Fishing Film Tour (you can read my review here: Austin Fly Fishing Film Tour Review), delivering custom rods, and fishing the Capitol City Kayak Fishing Tournament Series stop number four on the beautiful Lower Colorado River.

I was pumped...finally another river bass tournament.  So, after work on Friday I ran by MOC Kayaks to sign up.  Both Beau Reed and Dan Walker, the tournament directors, were there, and I was able to hang out and chat with them for about and hour on Friday night before I headed home to get some rest.

Saturday morning found me waking up at four o'clock in the morning to hit the road for a quick coffee and breakfast stop at Whataburger before heading back to MOC Kayaks to ready my kayak and gear for the days tournament.  I was finished early, so I tried to help out as much as I could.

Morning at MOC Kayaks

Once everyone was ready, a few of the competitors caravanned to the take-out spot to drop off our vehicles.  Dan was kind enough to provide a shuttle for us to get back to the launch sight.  As soon as we got back, we hit the river for a day of tournament bassing.

The tournament format allowed for you to fish anywhere along the Lower Colorado River, between Austin and Bastrop, that you could legally access.  This allowed for the 29 conventional anglers and 7 fly anglers to compete along the same river without being overly crowded.  There were about 15 or 20 anglers who launched at the same place as me, and I never once felt too crowded.

Thick fog of the morning

In the thick morning fog, we launched our kayaks.  Having never been on this stretch of river before, I was unsure what to expect.  Assuming that these were going to be post-spawn river bass, my game-plan was to throw topwater early, then crank the shallow flowing water and flip jigs into slower water with more cover...so that is what I did.

Fish #1, on a topwater prop-bait

I caught one keeper on probably my 5th cast, then three more short fish shortly after that.  Then, the topwater bite just turned off.  I missed one good fish, right at the boat, on a GreenTackle Football jig with a custom crawfish colored jig skirt, in a cove/pond, and struggled the next couple hours trying to figure out the bite.  I kept changing my crankbait and jig colors to try and figure out what the fish were keying on.  Finally, I caught my second keeper fish dragging my GreenTackle jig through some deeper grass in slower water.  Then missed a keeper, on a crawfish colored Rapala crankbait, in an eddy just off from some pretty strong current, so I was feeling more confident about my chances.

Fish #2, on a Crawfish colored jig

Fish #3, on a crawfish crankbait

Shortly, I landed my third keeper fish on the crawfish crankbait, and narrowed my color selection down to just crawfish patterns.  It is things like this that pre-fishing would really help with.  And then fish number four, a 14.5 in Guadalupe bass (probably a smally-guad hybrid) in some current a little further down river.  That put me at four fish with about an hour and a half left to fish.

Fish #4, Guad on the crawfish crank

Me, sneaking my Jackson Coosa into a small cove

Unfortunately, at that  point I was almost to the take out point, and the river changed in this last section.  It really slowed down, to almost no flow, and the grass became thicker.  It was impossible to throw the crankbait, so I flipped the jig around that area for another 45 minutes without a bite.

Dragging a jig

Needing one more keeper fish, and not getting any more bites on the jig, I decided to downsize, and start tossing a four inch black senko, wacky rigged, and draw a small chartreuse tip on it with Spike-it markers.  That is probably the bait to catch small bass, in my opinion, so I knew I would get bites.  I was just hoping that at least one would keep.  Well...I caught two more fish, but both went 13.5 inches, and I could not add them to my "stringer."

At that point it was time to head in, load up, and drive back.  When we got back to MOC Kayaks, Lonestar Beer, who had just jumped in a sponsor, had ice-cold beer waiting for the competitors and Rudy's BBQ provided more BBQ than we could eat.  We all hung around and talked about how we did that day, what we caught fish on, etc, and waited for the scores to be tallied.

They soon were; winners were crowned and prizes were given out.  I ended up in 9th place in the conventional division (dang those two fish that I lost!!!), and won a YETI Tundra 45 cooler...NICE!  Here are the final results:

Winning my Yeti

Overall, these guys put on one great tournament, and from what I have heard, a great tournament series overall.  They have some amazing sponsors on board for this season and next.  I met some great people, including a couple of y'all who follow the blog!!!  Thanks for that.  I really hope to get to fish these tournaments more often!

Dan presenting some sponsors

*Note, since I misplaced my pictures from tourny day somewhere, I want to give a big shout out to the Capitol City Kayak Fishing Tournament Series for providing me with some great shots!*