2009 NEKF Striper Shootout Report |
Sunday, 06 September 2009 16:15 |
The Striper Shootout is a tournament put on by New England Kayak Fishing. They’ve been holding it for several years and I got to attend. I booked an RV spot in Winter Garden Park. That’s where the barbeque and awards were going to be held on Sunday. I had already paid for the spots and refunds weren’t available. Besides if the weather got miserable I had my camper and laptop and I’d get some work done. Last a bunch of people I knew were going to be staying there and knew the terrain. When I got there I found Carl 4x4 and family, John, George and several others. I knew some of the members of the KFM forums were going to be there in an area called the igloo. After checking it out I don’t know how it got that name. Danny was going to come with his wife and was staying in town in a hotel. Also the Wolf pack had reserved three spots and several were going to attend. I didn’t register because I didn’t want to compete. I came up to take pictures and video. I had with me both my electric kayaks. My Bassyaks that I’d had for 7 weeks and a Torque. I arrived on Thursday afternoon after a 5 plus hour drive from NJ. I lost about a half hour to a big accident at the confluence of Interstate 84 and the Mass Tpk. I set up the camper and settled in. A bunch of the guys were going to hit the water that evening so I joined them. There were about a dozen of us. I took the Torque and every other kayak was a Hobie. At the JBay tourney almost half the kayaks were Hobies but here the numbers were ridiculous. The previous year I learned there were over 100 and the tournament only had about 130 participants! The plan this evening was to work up the shoreline towards Marblehead. It was a zoo with so many kayaks fishing together. We spooked some fish and a few were caught but it was slow. George and I worked our way back. There were some fish very close to the bank so I was cutting under the walkways to the docks. On one as I got under it I noticed ropes hanging down. I quickly put the kayak in reverse to prevent tangling with the ropes and learned a valuable lesson. Don’t go fast in reverse when you have lines out. I had run over my line and had braided line wrapped around the motor. I still had forward but lost reverse. In the dark I didn’t want to play with it so I worked my way back to the ramp and George went on to fish the power plant that was right around the corner from the ramp. The next morning when I pulled the prop off the motor I found red monofilament under my braid. Turns out the prop can be removed with pliers.
Artifical Division Fly Rick and Luis tied with 43” but Rick’s second fish was 42” and it broke the tie. Ian got a very nice fly fish at 36.5” in the fly division. Jose and Dee both entered the fly division and didn’t get a fish. That shows how impressive his 36.5” winner was. |
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