Kayak tournament returns to Bella Vista
Anglers from all over the area came to Bella Vista last weekend for the Kayak Bass Fishing Trail tournament, which gave out $1,950 in prize money and served as a qualifier for the upcoming national championship.
Jason Adams, co-founder of Fish it Forward and pro angler with Ozark Mountain Trading Company, helped set up this tournament. He said the tournament drew 41 anglers, an improvement over the previous event’s 39, and he’s talking with the POA to set up additional tournaments next year.
He was glad to get the tournament on all of Bella Vista’s lakes this time around, he said, and the weather was perfect. He was happy with the tournament, he said, even if putting it on was a lot of work. He was glad to see people show up, he said, because that work could have gone to waste otherwise.
“I have a couple hundred hours in it,” he said. “It’s nerve wracking, you put a lot of work into it.”
Adams said he had to coordinate with the POA, the city and the event’s sponsors. Additionally, he said, this is the first year someone could get a one-day lake-use pass, which made the tournament possible for people who aren’t POA members.
This includes Michael Sandlin, who came down from Joplin, Mo., to fish in the tournament, hauling his kayak on a trailer he made himself.
“I’m from Missouri but I go all over,” he said. “It’s fun.”
The fishing, he said as he dragged his kayak from Lake Windsor, was somewhat slow, but he had a good time even if he only
caught four fish.
He fished on Windsor and Britney, he said, the latter because the largest fish in the previous tournament was caught in it.
Fishing isn’t always as easy as being in the right lake, he said.
“I think it’s knowledge, I think it’s being able to break down a lake and know what the fish are doing,” he said.
When he started with the sport three years ago, he said, kayak fishing was still young and there wasn’t a lot of equipment someone could just go and buy. A lot of gear got made by people who wanted to use it, he said, as evidenced by things like his trailer and another angler’s PVC pipe rod holder spotted in a parking lot.
“When we started this sport they didn’t have that much of anything,” he said. “If you wanted it you had to design it and make it.”
The sport has grown rapidly, he said, as evidenced by the availability of these products in stores today. Moreover, he said, he sees more kayaks on people’s docks now than he used to.
Sandlin said that, until he started fishing in with a kayak, he never really fished for bass — only crappie and bluegill. And using a kayak, he said, is more environmentally friendly than traditional bass fishing because, with the scoring system used in kayak fishing, the fish aren’t displaced from their habitats and the interruption to their life is minimized.
“We return the fish and don’t bother their habitat at all,” he said.
By contrast, he said, traditional bass fishing sees the fish pulled from the water, taken to a weigh station, then dumped just about anywhere in the lake.
But using a kayak does present some different challenges, he said.
His kayak has five rods onboard, he said, so he can just switch to the rod with the bait and hook he wants to use rather than fiddle with it on the compact boat.
Moreover, he said, an angler in a kayak needs to be prepared to flip. A life vest is required, he said, and anglers spotted without one are disqualified. His rods have carabiners in place to keep them close to the boat, but he’s lost a lot of equipment in a flip before — roughly a thousand dollars worth of gear, he estimated.
With at least most of the gear he left with packed away and the kayak strapped in place on his trailer, it was time to call it a day.
“I had a good time today,” Sandlin said. “Now it’s time to go eat.”