5th Annual Yak Attack Tournament - My Mini Slam

 

The end to the last day of my 1st semester of Nursing School could not come soon enough this past Friday. I needed to make the trip to Farmville, VA for my first appearance at the Yak Attack event. The trip was originally advertised as 3.5 hours by my GPS turned into an almost 5.5 hour journey. I'm not the biggest fan of driving in the first place, but when there is traffic I absolutely despise it.

Anyways I made it to the CAMP right at 7pm to check in, get my captain's bag and to buy some raffle tickets. The Captain's Bag had some great stuff from some generous sponsors; polar bottle, powerteam lure assortment, 4 inch sample of the new YakAttack Polymer geartrac, and some stickers and other goodies.

I made my way around saying hi to some of the familiar faces and meeting some others. I was kind of there on my own as most of crew was either at the J-BAY event or back home. Fortunately, some of Tidewater crew (Richie Bekolay, Rob Choi, Joe Underwood and a bunch of others) that I knew took me in and let me hang with them for the two nights. Unfortunately, they didn't invite me fishing with them tournament day as they had a stellar day... But it was well deserved they had scouted the area for two days prior and really did their homework and I didn't want to step on anyone's toes and I definitely wasn't gonna ask to fish their holes, one of the unwritten rules of kayak fishing.

At night around the tent I did mostly listening, guys were telling stories of fish and tactics and all sorts of good stuff, so I was just trying to learn as much as I could from these guys, who are some of the best fishermen in the whole region.

Saturday rolled around bright and early... I was and Sandy River Reservoir and ready to launch by about 5:45 am with safe launch allowed at 6am. For the next 4 hours it flat out sucked... I had never fished this lake before so I was pretty much trying just about everything.

Eventually I caught up with Bryan (HearadonCatch), one of the only other Maryland guys that I knew. I was surprised to see him as he said he was fishing another locale, but he was late to rise so Sandy River is was. So we went to work.. sharing as much info as we both had which wasn't much cause we weren't catching much.

Anyways we fished trying to locate the SLAM (Bass, Bluegill, Crappie), which was the top prize for the tournament. Eventually after not much luck a tied on a 1/16 oz spinner bait and went to work, knowing that this type of lure had the potential to catch all three species... and it sure did... not only the 3 for the slam but a whole new set of 3 species.

 

This was the 1st Red Ear Sunfish I have ever caught.

 

 

 

Rock Bass was another new species for me!!

Both Bryan and I ended up catching our SLAMs and we were pretty happy considering the tough fishing for us on the new body of water. I ended up finishing 10th out of 75 in the SLAM Division with my Mini Slam of 27 inches and Bryan was just a spot or two behind me!!! So all in all we set out to catch 3 species and we accomplished it, next year we'll worry about getting some bigger ones.

The overall SLAM Champion ending up being Richie Bekolay, who is really on a roll... he also won the TKAA SLAM this past fall!! He is a solid all around fisherman.


Today I woke up and headed over Biery Creek Lake to check it out and fish. It was a really neat place I finished the day with 3-4 in the boat, hooked and lost 2 on the jump that were easily 18-20 inches, and missed another 6 or so blow ups on the frog.

 

Briery Creek Lake is trees and stumps for days...