Let’s see. $40,500 divided by 188.5 inches. That’s almost $215 per inch of bass caught by Hobie Fishing Team member Kurt Smits over the two days of the 2017 KayakBassFishing National Championship tournament held on the Kentucky Lake complex. Pretty snazzy.
Smits, who fishes for Hobie dealer Strictly Sail out of Cincinnati, Ohio, acknowledged there were a lot of digits on that giant check, but it isn’t all about the money. “It’s quite an honor to be part of the whole scene of what’s happening. Kayak bass fishing is exploding,” he said.
He qualified for the KBF National Championship, a Catch, Photo, Release (CPR) tournament contested between 362 winners and open qualifiers, through the Buckeye Kayak Fishing Trail.
Smits told Hobie Fishing that he got off to a great start on day one of the two-day event. He quickly identified a productive pattern on a windy day. “I was in a cove with a lot of stake beds. I was dragging small plastic worms through and getting bit,” he said.
Those were smaller fish, the schoolies. When he ventured a little outside the stake beds into a current break, he found the big ones holding. “That was day one. I went from stake bed to stake bed to stake bed. I had my 5-fish limit in the first hour,” he said. At the end of the day he was sitting comfortably in second with 99.75 inches. Not bad at all for a dark horse angler who’d set his sights on finishing in the top ten.
“No one knows me. The heavy hitters don’t know my name,” he said. They must have been paying attention after day one.
Day two of the competition, as it often is, was different. The wind shifted 180 degrees. A cold front came through, crashing water temperatures 5 to 6 degrees. Smits quickly discovered his day one pattern no longer worked.
“At last year’s open I didn’t make an adjustment and it killed me,” he said. It was time to mix it up. He headed toward the famous ledges in the main lake, but before he got there came across thousands of fish schooled up on the ledges in the secondary lake zones. The only problem was they wouldn’t bite. At least not at first.
“If you waited long enough and used a small worm, a diminished profile bait, you could get them to strike,” he said. It took a while. He didn’t hit his 5-fish tournament until 2 pm, ending the day with 88.75 inches, for a two-day total of 188.5. It was enough for a championship.
He credited his Hobie Mirage Pro Angler 14 for the win. Without the MirageDrive, in that wind he could never have held position to finesse his fish off the stake beds and ledges.
Smits said the camaraderie between the competitors was a highlight. “Everyone I came in contact with was amazing. It’s my biggest takeaway,” he said. Not his big fish of the tournament, which was a 22 or 22.5 – he couldn’t remember. “I’m not a numbers guy,” he said. “I just like fishing.”
