We are coming up on the halfway mark in the Winter 2018 Yak Tribe tournament. This tournament has been the most challenging for me yet. Every single day I have been able to fish, I have had to deal with either frigid cold, pouring rain, high winds, or some combination of the three. With the limited amount of time I have had to fish, I have just had to suck it up and deal with whatever conditions were presented to me on that particular day. Thankfully, my efforts have been rewarded with some good fish.
In this tournament, you are allowed to enter two fish over 24" and six that are 24" and under. I was able to land a 38.25" blue on day one of the tournament for one of my over slot fish. Then on Thanksgiving morning, I hooked into a 41" blue for my other over slot entry.
While most people focus on the big fish, it is actually your slot fish that make up the bulk of your score in this style of tournament. Getting six fish as close to 24" as possible without going over isn't as easy a task as it sounds. You have to sort through a lot of fish to be able to max out your score.
Feeling pretty good about my two over slot fish, I decided to spend a couple days specifically targeting smaller fish. Yesterday, I hit a backwater creek that was loaded with shad. I used stake out poles to anchor my kayak in about 3 feet of water and used chicken breast baited on small 3/0 size circle hooks. I caught around 20 fish total fish with a mix of blues, channels, and even one small flathead.
I went back out to the same area today only to find out that TVA had dropped the water level some more overnight. The spot I had anchored on yesterday was now dry land. I ended up spending the afternoon doing a combination of anchoring and suspend fishing with chicken breast for bait and caught somewhere around 20-30 fish total on the day. I didn't catch any 24" fish but I did fill all my slots with fish ranging from 20" to 23.25".
I still have a lot of work to do over the next couple weeks in order to keep myself in contention to win this tournament but as of now, I am in pretty good shape. Currently, I am sitting in first place with a small lead. Hopefully the weather will be a little more cooperative for the rest of the tournament and I can finish this thing out strong.
