One of the productive trees I found.
This past week was all about fishing shallow on Lake Guntersville for myself and my Tyr. I chose to paddle, versus using the Torqeedo, and go without using any electronics. It is my favorite way to fish. It is how I learned to fish as a kid in the phosphate pits of Florida, and how I fish on creeks and rivers. Simple, pure, low-stress, and as fun as it gets. To best understand what I am talking about, to get to the place where I got my 95.5″ bag (Which it turns out was the biggest of the championships), I had to paddle for about 30 minutes in water/mud that was between .5″ deep and 12″ deep.
This floating mess was always fun to fish.
The Tyr is literally the only kayak that was equipped to do that because the draft on the Tyr is less than any other kayak, it doesn’t have a protruding keel, or scupper holes. I won’t lie, it wasn’t an easy paddle, however, I was able to get to a place where I would be the only fisherman there, and could catch 30+ fish/day. It took me a while to learn to fish this area well. In fact, on day 1 of the event, I moved from where I was, leaving at 11am, and arriving at my new location at 12:30 and for the next two hours of fishing I only caught 2 fish, a 15″ and a 14″ bass. However, I missed two big fish on the frog where I saw their tails and knew they were likely 20″ fish. Day 2 I chose to go back there, even though I caught 30 fish at my first location (and lost two of the biggest ones at the boat, that would have taken my 17th place day 1 finish up to about 3rd or 4th). I beat up my first spot pretty bad, so chose new water. It was not a fast day, but my first fish of the day was a 19.5″ at 7:24 and I kept on catching fish all day. Finally I found out that there were big ones in the laydowns and I could only catch them by flipping a 1oz weight in there on a Rage Bug, punching through the Duckweed and sticky mess into about 3′ of water. Every laydown produced at least 2 fish, and there were 4 main laydowns. I lost a 19″ bass off of my measuring board while I was fiddling around with my phone trying to get it in photo mode. I had my hand down on it so tight that it perfectly got pumpkin seeded out the side of my boat without even hitting the side when it did an aggressive flop.
These 20″ fish were hard to come by in the backwaters I was fishing, but I managed a few.
Getting around in the super narrow channels, around and over logs is something that is simply easier in the Tyr. You can easily paddle over logs, since it is a board flat hull, with nothing to catch. Most boats when the keel gets on the log, they want to tip you out of them. The Tyr is as stable on a log from front to back as if it was sitting on the ground, Perfectly stable. Chad Hoover made a comment that my boat was the dirtiest boat in the tournament. That was a true statement. Paddling through topped out hydrilla means picking up some of it on your paddle and it flying off onto the boat. The hydrilla is a filter for the water and it has a lot of mud on it. I didn’t bother cleaning my boat as it is a stamp of honor, in my eyes. It is like taking your offroad truck “mudding” and leaving the mud on after you finish. Everyone knows you have had your truck where it was designed to go, not just on the street.
What my boat looks like when I paddle through the slop.
It was a fun tournament for me, watching the leaderboard, and talking to my wife, Kristine, who was paying close attention all day as well. On Day 1 I lost my first two big fish in the first 30 minutes of the day, but still managed to get up to 5th place for a while, but dropped down at the end of the day to 17th due to no upgrades when I moved at 11am. Day 2 I started with that 19″ fish and shot up to the top 10 pretty quickly after that. Quickly, however, I started moving upwards, replacing 14″ fish with 20″ fish, etc.. I was fired up to see my name at the top of the list by the time they turned off the leaderboard. I was still catching them and got to where my smallest fish was 18.25″ and caught that 19″ fish that jumped off of my board into the water before I got a photo. No more upgrades after that, but I was sitting at 95.75″ which I was very happy with.
When you see your name at the top it is worth saving a copy of that!
The fact that I showed up a few days earlier thinking I was fishing where I did some good froggin’ earlier this summer, and took Chad with me one day to check it out, but found out that this location on Mudd Creek was dead water with nothing to catch threw me for a loop. I managed to find my spots in one afternoon. I caught zero fish at one of the locations, but got a bunch of blowups on a frog, and I was trying to catch them.
The old lip and grin never gets old!
Paddling back to the truck and getting to the check-in on time took some energy. I was fishing on Guntersville and Ditto Landing was the location of the check-in on Lake Wheeler. I had planned, also, when I signed up for this event to fish up some of the creeks off of Wheeler, but they were all off limits. I don’t like seeing that, myself, as I feel kayak fishing should always allow a kayak to be a kayak and do what a kayak does best. Once you put a Torqeedo or Trolling motor on a kayak, and all of the electronics, and fish the main lake, you don’t need a kayak and could be in a bass boat. That is my take on it. I did manage to find “kayak water” that was in bounds, however, and I that made me very happy.
What a 6:30am start looks like.
If you $11,000 that you can afford to spend on a fishing kayak, you won’t be disappointed in the Tyr. Nothing is quite like it. Lightweight, fast, stable, best seat in the business, shallow running, and the list goes on. Sure, you can catch fish out of a $500 kayak, too, and if that is what you can afford or want to do, that is great. However, having the Ferrari of kayaks is quite fun!
here is a video from the event you might want to check out.
Cruising at 7.5mph with the Torqeedo on Lake Caddo last year.
🙂
EJ