A day too late for Lake Wylie KnG Tournament

The first 2014 Kayaks n’ Greenbacks tournament by Hunt Fish Paddle on Lake Wylie in South Carolina was a success.  Kayak anglers from all around the east coast and mid-west came together to compete in a two day tournament fishing for the biggest freshwater kayak tournament payout right at $6500 to the winner, based on the number of participants. With this tournament being schedule for the end of March, I was hoping for a shallow spawn bite but Mother Nature didn’t approve.

The weather forecast was rain and thunderstorm for day one but we all lucked out with it raining instead. I made a run to fish upper Wylie in the Catawba River hoping to catch some Spotted Bass there, thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to catch them. Got there in the morning and the river was down and not generating. I fished pretty hard that morning throwing everything I had. Decided it was time to move on and head down to the lake.

The water temperature wasn’t quite there yet for them to all move up shallow. I personally think them shallow fish are the resident fish that stays shallow all year round and there wasn’t enough of them to get you by. These fish was so scattered, that it was hard to key in on where they would be. Five minutes left of day one before having to wrap it up and make it back to check in, I was going to check in with 0 fish. I decided to go offshore and noticed something. I caught two back to back and could’ve caught more but time wasn’t on my side.

18.5 inch Largemouth

Day two wasn’t looking so great either with heavy wind gusting up to 30mph. This was going to be interesting and scary. The wind was already blowing at 6 a.m. I was hoping to pick up more fish from where I found them on day one. Within the first hour it was on, I was catching them real good. I moved on to another spot to try the same thing to see if I could find bigger fish to cull and the same thing happened. These fish was stacked up and it was cast after cast. I must have caught over 20 fish within the first few hours before the wind got real nasty. I left them biting because I couldn’t position myself with the wind gusting non stop anymore and the lake was white capping and rolling like crazy.