Jacksonville Kayak Fishing Classic 2012

On May 11, I loaded up the Jackson Cuda and headed north to Jacksonville, Florida to fish the 9th annual Jacksonville Kayak Fishing Classic. This was my third time attending this event. This event brings in close to 400 kayak anglers each year. The captain’s meeting was put together very well. There was what seemed to be an endless raffle & great food. Shorty after the meeting I met up with a couple Jackson Team members and headed off to the hotel to get ready for a morning of fishing.

My morning started early at 4am. After a quick stop at the local gas station to stock up on some drinks and munchies I headed to the launch. When I arrived at my launch location I found that I was the only person there. I asked myself, was this sign of how the fishing was going to be? Usually if there are fish at this location there would be many others putting in. I met up with a local friend of mine that had been pre fishing the area for the last week or so we stuck with our original plan and launched at safe light. The morning started off good for me catching a decent Speckled Trout on my first cast. But my luck didn’t last very long. From there on out it was slow. I managed to pick up 3 more small Trout and a Black Drum. I couldn’t find a Redfish or Flounder throughout the rest of my morning. By 10am the winds had picked up tot at least 20-30mph out of the east which made it nearly impossible to fish so I found a spot up in the grass where I decided to test out the reclining position of the Jackson seat. After a 30 min nap I decided that the weather was just too much for me to handle so I called it quits early around 11am and headed back to the launch.

The awards ceremony was great. Great meal provided by Sticky Fingers BBQ. There were some great fish caught in some horrible wind conditions. Congrats to all the winners at this event. I will be looking forward to this event again in 2013 and hope to see many of the Jackson Team members next year.

Steve Gibson