Mother Nature Always Wins: Yak Tribe Day 5

My fifth day of fishing for the Yak Tribe tournament was a memorable one but not for the reasons I had hoped for. I didn't have long to fish and I had to spend part of my time catching some live bluegill since I hadn't been able to catch any decent bait over the holiday weekend. The skipjack bite has been tough to non-existent in the areas I have been fishing lately.

After catching some bluegill, I anchored down on my first spot. I had gone back to the same area where I had caught those big blue cats on my fourth day of fishing in the tournament. I immediately started to get some action. One of the issues with fishing shallow water areas like that is that those places are loaded with channel cats and smaller blues. They can clean you out of bait in a hurry. I hooked up with two of them but neither were big enough to cull any of my other fish.

After fishing for about an hour, some dark clouds started to move into the area. I had heard some thunder off in the distance and decided to get off the water. I don't mind fishing in the rain but storms are nothing to mess around with. I had just got my lines reeled in and started to head back to the car when the winds hit. It went from flat calm to gusting 30+mph in the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, huge swells were rolling directly upstream. This made getting back across the channel extremely difficult. At one point I lost my measuring board over the side of the kayak. One of my fears coming into this tournament was that my board would sink if it ever went over due to its weight but it actually floated long enough for me to recover it.

Due to the wind and the swells, it took about twice as long to get back to the car. This was another one of those times I was thankful to have a pedal kayak. If had been paddling a traditional style kayak, I wouldn't have made any progress against that wind. Having a sit on top style kayak really helped prevent things from being a lot worse than they could have been as well. Because I had to go across the swells instead of into them, I took a lot of water over the side of the kayak. It wasn't an issue since I have a sit on top kayak that drains but if I had been in a sit inside kayak, it would have filled up like a bath tub.

Fortunately, I made it back to the car safely. The only casualty was my bait bucket which must have either gotten blown out or washed out on the way. I have been caught out in some storms in the past but this was one of the worst. Below is the video footage from the day.