The Yaks Attack Farmville
If you couldn’t tell by my super
catchy title, this is a recollection of the 2014 Yakattack Tournament out of
Twin Lakes State Park, Farmville, Virginia as told by Josh Dolin. Eventually I’ll
get Grant to type something up, but for the time being, you’re stuck with me. It’s
probably for the best anyhow considering I haven’t really written anything in a
few years and I could use a little practice. Anyhow, here we go…
After a long week of work and recovering
from the spanking I was dealt at the Shad Shootout the weekend prior I began to
get pumped for the upcoming event in Farmville. Generally I don’t fish many
tournaments and it just so happens that two of the three that I fish fell
within the same week. Luther Cifers, owner/operator of the Yakattack brand, and
his crew, put on a great event. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking
forward to it since last year’s tourney. Between the great people, the good
food, and the overall positive fishy atmosphere, it’s definitely somewhere
every kayak angler should be, regardless of experience. Though all that is
great we’ll come back to that later, it’s time to talk fish.
I rigged up Thursday night with
plans of prefishing all day Friday. I really got lucky that we weren’t too
slammed at work, which is rare, thus allowing me to take the day off. I woke up
at around 3 a.m. Friday morning to sort of get up to speed for the day ahead.
Even though I’m still considered to be “young” by most guys reading this, I’m
finding it harder and harder each passing trip to just jump out of bed and hit
the road. To prevent me from snoozing through my alarm and getting on the water
late, this usually leads to me either, driving through the night and sleeping
in the boat ramp parking lot….. or doing what I mentioned prior. With the truck
loaded I hit the road, making it to the lake just before sunrise. I took my
time prepping the yak and at 7 a.m. I hit the water, by 7:15 I stuck my biggest
bass to date!
(She went 23 inches and somewhere
in the 7lb range)
With my adrenaline pumping I wasn’t sure
whether to be happy, or mad that I took a chance at a good fish away from my
tourney hopes. Either way it was my first citation largemouth and I’m still
riding the high of it! Though I started the day with a bang I ended it with a
whimper, nothing but a big goose egg for bass, although I did find the crappie I
was looking for so that kept me in good spirits.
(Destroying some steak)
(Seafood chowder....enough said)
Grant and I discussed over the
awesome steak dinner and seafood chowder, that, the Crappie was going to be the
golden ticket to winning the slam. It usually is with this tournament, but it
seemed to be a more profound objective with the ever deteriorating weather
conditions that seem to plague these kayak tournaments. After stuffing
ourselves to the max we took a walk down to the lake adjacent to the conference
center to see if there was any life in it. Sure enough, there sat two nice
bucketmouths, one about 17 inches long, the other, the female, about 20-22
inches long. This discovery played a profound role in my game planning for the
next day’s fishing. With Grant fishing Sandy all day I knew I wanted to mix it
up a little. I usually stick to one location when fishing these tournaments and
up until that point it hadn’t been very successful. I decided to stay mobile
throughout the day, driving as far from Twin Lakes as I could to start, and
hitting every good spot I could on my way back.
(Grant's 19 inch Largemouth)
(Grant's 16 inch Largemouth)
(The Golden Ticket)
After getting an 8 inch
crappie and two 8 inch sunfish tournament morning, I found myself back at Sandy….
and with Sandy came the wind. I’m not sure what hurricane blew up during my
drive from Powhatan to Sandy, but sure enough, there were white caps on the
lake. I launched anyway in hopes of bumping up my sunfish length total on a
hot bed I found a few days prior, but the wind made that all but impossible. Everything
had pulled of the banks with the waves breaking and the wind was too strong to
try and sit stationary and vertical jig for them. So after about an hour’s
worth of cussing the damn wind I packed it in for the final leg of my fishing
marathon, the conference center bass. I did manage to run into Grant while at
Sandy, we had not spoken since I left that morning. He managed two nice
largemouth totaling 35 1/2 inches; he also had a 7 inch sunfish to go along
with the pair. Grant said he was feeling good about his chances, it was only
about noon and he had the rest of the day to catch a Crappie. This made me
pretty weary. Grant is a great friend and a damn good fisherman…. but he always
seems to be my stiffest competition when it comes to these events. Trying to
keep myself thinking positive, I told myself there’s no possible way that dude
could win two weekends in a row, and with a new found confidence we parted
ways. Him chasing any Crappie that would hit, and me going after the big mama I
had seen the night before. I already had a slam but it was only a measly 26
inches between three fish, in my mind pretty pathetic at the time… in hind
sight I realize I was lucky to have that, many guys came back with two fish or
less all day!
Pulling up to the Twin Lakes ramp at
around 1 p.m., I knew I had a little under three hours to work on these two
fish. I paddled over, scooted up the shoreline within eyesight of the bed, and
locked my yak down next to the bank with my ParkNPole. Constantly studying the
fish as I flipped the bed I noticed that the female was not locked down,
meaning she had not dropped her eggs yet, thus making it much harder to get her
to pick something off of the bed. Although, I did notice that both fish would
swim in wide paths around the bed, just long enough for a few bluegill to
cruise into their clearing, they’d then proceed to fly into the nest a full
speed and swirl on the sunfish causing a pretty wicked wake in the shallow
water. This gave me an idea; I tied on a Smithwick Perfect 10 jerkbait in
blueback herring color, just about the right coloration for the bream that were
pestering the bed. Sure enough after yanking the jerkbait directly over the bed
and pausing it there just long enough, I finally pissed her off enough to
strike. To true Josh Dolin luck, she managed to hit the bait in the back,
leaving all three trebles exposed with no chance to hook her. Time passed and I
simply couldn’t get them to hit anything else, with fear that they had honed in
on my location I repositioned myself on the opposite side of the bed. After throwing
everything and the kitchen sink at them I had a guy from Powerteam Lures bring
me a Diesel Craw in black and blue flake. By this time I had a nice little
audience considering I was the only fool still fishing, of course Grant showed up
at about this time, and of course he had a decent slam. I still had hope, he
had the exact same length between his crappie and sunfish that I did, paired
with a 19 inch largemouth. This meant that if I could somehow manage to land
the 20 incher I’d been staring down for the last two hours, I might just have a
shot at winning.
With
about 15 minutes to go before check in the big girl engulfed the shakey head. I
set the hook with some serious force but she managed to tail walk me, thrashing
her head as hard as she could, spitting the bait right back in my face…. I
bailed out of the yak and after chucking my rod and a few choice words, it was
all over. I checked in with three minutes to spare, initially bummed but my
hopes at placing in a division rose as I began to hear the accounts of horrible
fishing due to the stellar weather we all dealt with.
(The awesome looking trophies)
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(Us holding the awesome looking trophies)
After sulking in the defeat that the hog molly dealt me,
and striking out in the raffles, it was time to announce the winners. Turns out
there were only three “Slams” caught all day, Grant’s, mine, and our new friend
Forrest Short’s. As we had anticipated the weather made it hard to locate and
capture the three species needed to complete the slam. Out of 131 people the
three of us being the only people to manage to do that felt pretty cool. When
it was all said and done Grant managed to win the slam, and I walked away with
2nd place in the Sunfish Division and 3rd place in the
Crappie Division. It was a welcomed surprise considering the trophy was bigger
than the fish I caught to win it! It just turned out to be that kind of day, a
tough one but in the end a good one considering we all made it back in one piece.
(Super awesome cell phone picture quality)
After the ceremonies were over it was time to wrap the tournament
up the only way Yakattack knows how….. with the best damn pig pickin’ you could
ask for! As if we didn’t do enough damage with the steaks the night before, we
packed it in with as much bbq pork as we could without going into a food coma. We
conversed with some of the coolest variety of characters you could imagine, all
leaving a lasting impression on us. We drove away from Farmville as winners,
not because of the trophies, but because of the new found friendships that we
had built.... not to mention the event raised upwards of $10,000 for the Heroes
on the Water organization, and for that, we should all be proud.
Fish Hard or Stay Home,
Fish Hard or Stay Home,
Josh Dolin
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