Summer Yak Tribe Tournament Week 1 Update
Week 1 of the summer Yak Tribe tournament is in the books. I didn't get off to the fast start that I was hoping for. The first two days were spent fishing for monster fish. I was fishing in what I consider big fish or bust type places. I anchored down on specific areas of structure and baited all of my lines with half to whole skipjack. The results were pretty lackluster. I only got a few bites and no big fish. It wasn't a complete loss though as I did manage to catch one 24" blue to fill one of my six slot submissions.
After spending the first two days relatively bored waiting on the big bite that never came, I decided to get back to my favorite type of fishing which is suspend drifting. I hit some main channel ledges up river from where I had been the previous two days. To get a little more action and conserve on bait, I only baited half my lines with huge baits and used my usual fist size chunks of skipjack for the other half. As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot more bites and hookups. I ended up with a 33" and 35" blue along with several other smaller fish.
After being run off the water by storms, I decided to go back to that section of the river and pick up where I left off the next afternoon. I used the same setup with half of my lines baited with huge baits and the other with my usual fist size. It was a slow evening of fishing. I only managed to catch a few fish and none of them were of a respectable size.
A big part of this tournament involves smaller "slot" fish. Six out of the eight fish I am allowed to enter have to be 24" or less. My goal in this tournament is to try to get each of my six fish that I submit for this portion as close to 24" as possible. Ultimately, everyone near the top of the leaderboard at the end will have done this. I decided to spend a day specifically targeting smaller fish to try to knock out the other 5 slot fish I needed. After stopping by the grocery store for some chicken breast, I hit the river to troll a drop-off adjacent to a big flat that is situated just below a creek that dumps into the main channel. I knew this area would be loaded with small fish and it didn't disappoint. I caught fish all morning long. Unfortunately, most were well under the size I was looking for but I did manage to catch a 23.25" and a 22.75" though.
All in all, it wasn't a bad week of fishing. I caught two good fish including that 35" blue cat which would qualify as a TARP (Tennessee Angler Recognition Program) and knocked off three of my six slot fish. While I would have liked to have at least caught all of my slot fish, I really can't complain about my results. There is still a lot of time left in this tournament. Here is a link to the weekly leaderboard
