An early report as I just got home.  There were 35 kayakers on the water today for the tournament 15 people checked in fish with either photos or fish I know everyone is waiting on who won the trash prize, and although victors bag of trash was bigger by volume, Bunnies bag of trash was slightly heavier do too a coconut, perhaps incidentally dropped in the lake buy a swallow

I will post up the official results tomorrow.
Gtg for now
 
 Jim


Final Scores

1st.  HalibutKing         695.25
2nd.  G-Whiz              505.75
3rd.  Fishingfool          490
4th.  CAwingshooter    473
5th.  Marcos               437.5

Same here Adam, but it is not every day that your wonderful wife turns 40.  I had my hands full trying to execute the party I have been planning for the last few weeks, but still felt a twinge of pain knowing that I couldn't be fishing Da Berry with my brothers!

Pot luck was at the campground.

Thanks Jim for your hard work.  It was my first NCKA event and I had fun, even though I didn't have a hog trough.  I put fish in a stringer and planned to borrow a trough at the ramp.  I lost my stringer with four fish while I tried to put a fifth fish in it.  No big deal.  I did get a pic of the fifth fish, a trout, with Pat's trough.  Thanks Pat!

Where was the potluck?  I couldn't find you guys.  I left around 1:45.

Gadzooks - so sorry to hear you lost your stringer WITH fish on it. I would have been balling my eyes out! But it was good you had fun despite the tragedy - NCKA has some awesome and fantastic people involved.

The potluck was about a mile down the road towards the entrance, near site # 88. I missed Pat - I just sent him a PM!

-Cherie

First and foremost, Thanks Jim for your continue hard work, dispite the challenges you encounter, great job on the event! Thanks Adventure Sports Kayak, Kayak City and all the sponsors for your continued support for this tournament and NCKA; it would not be possible without you. Lastly to Ricci, Thanks for helping out with BSS3, I know Jim happy to have you as his “Wingman” on this event.

Wow! It took a 10hr nap just to get over the week! Great to get back o the water/kayak (after a 3 month gap between the Crabfest to BSS) and to chill with new and old friends for a few days.

Got the campground shortly before 9am Saturday to due a little "scouting", but didn't get on the water until before noon; did the "social butterfly" thing catching up with Alshobie, Fishshadow, NoSoupForU, Fishworks and Reelknots, so it took a while to get rigged up. Also switch campsite until I found the perfect spot launch from; unlike Lupine Shores, Pleasure Cove campgrounds is deeper inside the inlet and launching was a little of a challenge unless you had a decent accent path to the water. So after changing campsite 4 times and lollygagging around for a couple of hours, we finally got on the water to do some scouting…

There was some nice tree/brush structure in the inlet which looked like it would hold some crappie; nope, no love there. Either they weren’t home, or with ALL the spawning carp in the area, they’ve already had there fill. So, after the seeing Kiel hookup twice in 15 minutes, I switched to trolling; “Dodge/Needlefish” on the outside rod, Shadrap on the inside. Manage to get one trout and a nice spotted bass within a 30 minute time span and hearing reports from my LS bros hooking up on kokos, I changed to hoochies & dodgers; but with no love for me after an hour, back to the campsite we went.

Now, if you ever had Kiel’s BBQ short ribs, you’ll know what I’m talking about; dat $h!t was da f-ing hook!!!!! Didn’t  have a chance making it to the AOTY Potluck, sorry guys!!!!  BTW: Congrads to all the AOTY winners, outstanding job you fellas did last year! Sailfish and Bird, you boys did a great job on the award ceremony! Potluck was great as usual; a lot of food, great company and good friends catching up on the past. Ricci, please thank you dad for the oysters; love grilled oysters!

Tourny Day:

Early wake up and second on the water; you know who was first, the guy from campsite 82. I trolled a Dodger/Needle on the highline and a Dodger/Hoochie 20’ on the wire for 2 hours of nadda. Did get one strike one the needlefish setup, saw the rod go off hard for a few seconds, then went quiet; darn fish stole my favorite needlefish, broke the knot just behind the dodger.

Now, that 2 hour troll was not entirely all for nadda because I didn’t catch any fish; on the troll out, I was scoping out possible areas for secondary species like crappie or bass. Which paid off with a limit of bass in just over an hour; but still did not find the crappie. So with some time left on the clock, I decided to troll for trout or koko all the way back to the launch ramp. After just putting the rods in the water, one goes off! After a good fight and a couple of jumps, it got it to the boat. It was a nice size bow, with a nice color and spots on his back. Mental note: bring a bigger net! Trying to coax the fish into my “favorite little black net” with lip barely hooked was torture. After the fourth time trying to turn the fish into the net, I could see hook pop out of the fishes mouth. I was so mad, I cursed so load the whole world should have heard me; but I forgot there was a little girl just a few yards from me. I felt so bad, even more than losing the big fish, what a bad example I was for this young fisher-person; I apologized to her for my un-sportsmen like conduct. Mental note: don’t be an idiot, it’s just a fish.

On my continued troll back in, I saw a nice cove with a lot of shade and trees; I could pass this up. Marked a lot of nice fish suspended of above some structure, so I dropped an agent in to investigate. Almost instantly, rod bends over, then gets hung; re-tie and second agent goes in. Samething, you see the rod tip twitch as the agent panics for his life, then you see the rod bend over and right when you go to reel it in, you’re hung. Atempt #3,  re-tied with a stronger leader; same outcome, smart fish hover just above the branch line, then dart back into for cover. But now with stronger leader, I’m snagged; but I did manage to recover the rig and part of that branch….

But now I have wasted to much precious time and I still wanted to troll back for a chance of pinks. I dropped my dodgers back in the water and peddled out of the cove; and BAM, poles goes off. What ever it was in was putting on a good fight on my koko-rod; turned out to be a nice 18” LMB! Was no excited that after its photo session on the hawg trough, I returned him and my hawg trough back into the lake… arrggg!

After get a time check said it was 12:23, I hightailed it back to the launch ramp for my weigh-in.

G-Whiz,

Thanks for the photos and great write up fishing story. Felt like I was there playing that chess game in your head with the fish and the circumstances that arise on the Berry. Congratulations on your bass limit.



   

Thanks to Jim, to anyone that assisted with the BSS3 and the sponsors.   It was another great event and it is always good to see our extended family and meet new members. 

Thanks to VWool and Narisa for giving several of us folks at the RV area rides to and from the potlucks and award presentation.

No luck with catching fish, but trash on the water came thru.  I was shocked to find a coconut of all things, I thought it was more styrofoam, too funny.  Probably fail off one of the houseboats.

Thanks for the goody bag, never thought trash would pay off.

Looking forward to another NCKA event.

Very nice guys.