TKAA Weekend - 3 Days of Fishing, 8 Hours of Sleep, and A Lot of Driving

So we started off the trip on Friday with some day time fishing at the Oasis from about 9:30am-2:30pm.... loaded up the yaks and four of us raced down to the TKAA captain's meeting, making it with 5 minutes to spare.

We caught a decent amount of specks this time and at one point we had 4 top water lures working, and the fishing were super active for about a half hour. One speck hit the lure and jumped cleanly 3 feet out of the water.

Tyler with a puppy with the most spots I've seen yet!

Tyler with his 24.5" Citation size Speckled Trout

We made it to the Captain's Meeting and got in line to get all checked in. Received our captain's bags and our tournament shirts. The T-shirts were great, but I was a little disappointed with the captains bags (although it did have a cablez sunglasses retainer which I can use). I felt that our Captain's Bags from our CBKA Tournament really took the cake with all the lures and baits from our awesome sponsors!!!

After the meeting "The Crew" decided we were gonna fish the light line at HRBT since we were down there. Hit the water around 9:30pm and fished until 1:30am. I immediately found a large school of fish sitting in the shadows. And I started catching right away. I thought they were trout based on there shape and that was confirmed when I caught my first Gray Trout (Weakfish). I continued to catch fish between 10-13 inches for about 45 minutes. I could see some bigger trout mixed in, but I could not entice them with anything I tried to throw at them. Some of the others got on some rockfish in the line and then we started catching some nice sized croaker by the 1st island. We wrapped it up and loaded up the yaks and Tyler and I took a nap in the parking lot before we headed off to our freshwater lake to fish the Largemouth Bass Division.

It was a really slow..... really rainy and really chilly day at Harwood's Mill Lake. This was the largest fish I could muster for the day and believe me I casted my butt off.

I switched over to a large worm presentation and tried the dead-stick tactic, but I was only rewarded with a pickerel for KW.

This lake definitely has quality fish though. The eventual winner of the LMB division fished the lake not far from us and managed a 19.25" fish on a carolina rig. After a long slow day we headed back to the check-in... I was the 1st to check in a fish, knowing though that it was not going to hold a place for very long.

The turn out was great with over 275 registrants.

I had 12 raffle tickets, but didn't managed to get a single ticket called. :(

Some of our MKF crew was able to do quite well in the tournament. Jack (Pinch) was able to place for the 2nd year in a row, taking 3rd place in the speckled trout division with a 22" speck.  And Robert (Big Fluke) lived up to his forum handle with a Flounder Division 1st place 22" Flounder...

On a side note Jack said he hooked into what he thought was a big red drum (he won the Red Drum Division Last year), but it broke him after a good fight and tow. Later we joked about how he purposely lost it so he wouldn't have to win the NuCanoe boat again haha

After the awards..... which the best thing was the food!! I loaded up on hot food after a long two days of fishing!!!  Four of us decided to hit the road that night to work our way back up to MD, so the drive wouldn't be so long home after fishing on Sunday.  We slept in our cars at a local tackle shop before fishing the next morning. The four of us met back up with Tyler and Cliff at the launch and proceeded to have one of the best fishing days in a long time!!

Crazy blue!

My 1st speck of the day was a near citation at 23.25", fat though!!!

We continued to catch fish all afternoon/day, then we saw some birds diving so we all raced over to toss some baits. I think at one point 5 out of the 6 of us were all hooked up. We had stumbled upon a school of mostly keeper rockfish up to mid 20's with some solid blues mixed in. We fished this area with good success for a while and later when the rockfish moved off, the speck came back and Tyler and Cliff had a good flurry of keeper specks.

My last fish of the weekend was another quality speck at 21.75".

It was an amazing weekend of fishing even though I wasn't able to catch a tournament worthy fish. I had a great time with the guys fishing and we were even able to have good time on the caravan where ever we were driving too.

Hopefully I can get on the water ASAP, but I picked up some extra hours at Backyard Boats in the coming weeks to help with the Annapolis Sail and Power Boat Shows. So come on our and pick up your new Hobie Kayak for the fall fishing, which I predict to be superb this year as the rockfish are getting bigger.

~WORD