Bass fishing team May update

Over the past few weeks, I've competed in two tournaments through NYKBF (New York Kayak Bass Fishing). On May 2nd, I finished 12th out of ~45 anglers on Onondaga Lake, and on May 16th, I finished 8th out of ~35 anglers at Owasco Lake 

Beginning with the Onondaga tournament, this is my home lake and I was expecting a good finish. The day before the tournament, I had found an area of the lake where I got a lot of bites. I went there to start the tournament and almost immediately caught 4 bass, including an 18.75” and a 20.25” (which ended up being the biggest bass of the tournament). After this, the bite slowed down heavily; I didn't catch my 5th fish until around 9am, then didn't catch another fish until around 11. With three small fish in my bag and little promise in my main area, I packed up my kayak, drove to the opposite end of the lake, and re-launched with about 1.5 hours left to fish. This was risky, but ended up being a great decision, as I caught 7 more fish and culled 4 times on my way to 92.25”, which was good enough for a 12th-place finish.

2 weeks later, the Owasco Lake tournament proved to be even more difficult. Knowing it was almost exclusively a smallmouth-dominated lake, most of my practice time was devoted to finding smallmouth, but I didn't find anything at all. I found a small (~150 yd) stretch of docks with dirtier water and a population of largemouth. I targeted this area for the entirety of the tournament. I began by fishing a big swimbait because of the high wind and low light conditions. I caught 2 bass on my first pass along the docks. Then, the sun came up and the wind died, so I focused on skipping a jig into shaded portions of docks and fishing slowly on the bottom. Over the course of 4 hours doing this, I caught 4 bass, one of which was 19.75”. By this time, I had a limit, but not a very big one. I knew the lake was fishing tough, so any limit would probably lead to a good finish. Towards the end of the day, it started to cloud up and the wind picked up, so I switched back to the swimbait. Because of this, I caught a 19.5” bass that culled me up around 6 inches with only 20 minutes left in the tournament. I finished with 88.25” and finished in 8th place. Because I was the highest-placing rookie, I won a gift card to Doc's Tackle.

Overall, throughout my three kayak tournaments this year, my finishes have only gotten better (27th, 12th, 8th). I am now strongly in contention for the trail's Rookie of the Year award. I'm looking forward to hopefully improving even further on Cayuga Lake on June 13th, along with getting multiple more members of the Bass Team involved in the tournament.

Erich Thompson , ESF Bass Fishing President