MAFF Kayak Tourney, Ponkapoag 9/15/2012
I decided to fish a frog that morning and it was my undoing. The bite was on, I had lots of blowups but my technique is so pathetic that I failed to make a single hookup. Tournament winner Dirty Hooker was fishing a wacky rig green senko across the pads with good success. Then the heavy rain came so I beached the kayak and just stood under the trees for a good 30-45 minutes. After the rain tapered off I returned to my yak and realized that my anchor was missing, the knot had slipped and it was in a couple feet of water back toward the shore. I located and salvaged my anchor and continued to fish the frog deep in the pads. The bite was noticeably slower now and I failed to raise a single fish. Frustrated, I paddled to clearer water and began a drift across the pond throwing a white spinnerbait. I ran into Pistolpete who told me he had 4 fish in the bag, had lost a couple others, and Drew had 5 in the bag. Here I was on my home water with a big fat zero, embarrassing. I continued to drift and finally hooked into my only bass of the day, a solid 2lb. Shortly after that I hooked into a monster pickerel, 24 inches and solid, an absolute beast that pulled the kayak around. I should have weighed him but I was too worked up. In the process of measuring him my brand new bump board went overboard and now sits in 7 feet of water in the middle of Ponki. Ironically, we had planned to have a lunker pickerel category for this tournament but since only six of us competed I didn't want to further dilute the kitty. This is the second tournament in a row where I bagged the biggest fish, just not the right species.