Road Trip: Kayak Fishing Classic at Jamaica Bay part 3

If you missed Part 1 or Part 2 you can click to read them.

The Piranha like teeth of the Bluefish

 After Collins heartbreaking lost fish we spent Saturday night re rigging everything with wire and creating a plan of attack. After talking to a couple of locals about the where and how to target the fluke which season opened Sunday. After getting some key info our plan was set to make a final push to get on the leader board. At this point I had the striper which seemed to be the hardest fish to catch throughout the weekend which I still wanted to upgrade. I also needed to catch a sizable bluefish and a fluke to complete the slam.

Road Trip: Kayak Fishing Classic at Jamaica Bay part 2

Read part 1 Here  -Friday night Collin and I devised a plan to head back to the same area we caught them on the second day. Saturday the second day of the tournament is allows you to fish a full 14 hours from 5 am to 7 pm.  We started the morning like we began Friday by heading to snag bait in the Mill basin the bait was thick there every morning boiling on top which made it easy to find and snag. We fished around these bait pods for a while live lining 12 inch bunker as it seemed to be a popular spot for the powerboats. After a half an hour without even a bluefish we trolled away to get our baits a more isolated from the large schools and easier for the predators to notice. 

Road Trip: Kayak Fishing Classic at Jamaica Bay part 1

Loaded up and ready for Jamaica Bay

I have started to cross the destinations off my list (read here) that I made at the beginning of the year. When  I first put this tournament on the list I wasn't sure if I would be able to go but now I cant wait for next year.The format of this tournament is different than anything I had done before It consists of four days of fishing. Starting with prefishing on Thursday and Friday morning then at noon on Friday the tournament fishing begins and runs until noon sunday. Collin and I missed prefishing Thursday but arrived at 2 am friday morning. We slept in the truck until 5am when we hit the water to learn as much as we could before the tournament started at 12 oclock.

Becoming the Compleat Angler

In an effort to become like Izaak Walton the author of the compleat angler read here .I finally made an effort to learn to fly fish I have had a fly rod for about three years now and have never really tried to learn how to use it. This week that changed and I don't know why I waited so long. My training pond would be the pond at the Olde Izaak Walton park in Leesburg Virginia. This pond has a variety of species including crappie and bass ,but my target were the abundant bluegill. The same fish I honed my spin fishing skills on when I was just starting out fishing.