The big announcement for the the Fall G2G is that I will be launching the North Texas Kayak Trail in March 2012. When I moved up here in the fall of 2008 I realized the potential for a tournament series, so I decided that 2012 was the opportunity for me establish a one.

The Schedule:
March: Ray Roberts
April: Fork
May: Grapevine
I am going to research for the best weekends to hold the tournaments, so that it will be on the best fishing weekend available. The lakes will be fished in those given months, but I will take feed back from everyone.

The rules will be simple for the first year.
1. Bass only (large, spot, Kentucky, Small, Guadalupe)
2. Artificials only
3. Catch-Photo-Release(CPR), so 8" Bass count
4. $25 entry Fee ($20 to payout, $5 for the Angler of the Year)
5. $5 Big Bass pot
6. You will be allowed to launch from any public launch point.

These are the basic rules. As you should expect I will add on to these. This is a new venture of mine so I want it to be successful.

This thread is for idea tossing. Everyone has a voice on what they want to see in a full blown tournament series, so please voice your opinion, or pm if you'd like to.

The time is right for North Texas kayakers to have their own fishing series, so I encourage everyone to participate.

Thank you,

Josh

Looking forward to this was nice to meet everyone at the G2G

Josh thanks for putting the G2G on

Thanks for putting togather this trail please let us know when help is needed

Awesome, Josh.

If there is ever anything I can do to help, just let me know.

I have made it a point to start participating in competitions, so from now on out, I will be planning accordingly and giving these events priority (requesting time off from work, etc).

Really looking forward to this.

I'm very happy to see a LMB tournament series in the north Texas area. Josh, I believe your the perfect man for the job. I'm sure you will find that the "If you build it he will come" statement will apply well here. You have support from myself and I'm sure from many others that share the same interest.

Sounds like fun. I told myself that I would start focusing on learning to fish with artificials, and this will help, so I definitely plan to participate. My recommendation: figure out a way to get the upper Brazos River into play for this series (launch at Hwy 16). Either way, sounds like it will be a blast fishing against the caliber of kayak bass anglers that we have here on TFF.

You just need to ask Dan for pointers Bert...

I am in, anyone who wants to prefish with me once we get dates set PM me.

I'm really pumped about this series. Thanks for all your time and planning of these Josh.

It was really nice to hang out with old friends and meeting new ones.

I'm down... Think it's gonna be a blast...

that would be real fun , maybe a few classes would be fun , like a multi speacies class the most or the biggest total length on 3 fish or something , because you know them sandbass an stuff are gonna get caught , just an idea , but im in sounds like alot of fun

Great idea and concept. If available I'll be there. Unfortunately (fortunately) those are my busiest fly fishing months.

Good move Josh !

I am sure you will gather a lot of participants.

Keep the details coming !


Thanks, Phill

I suggest making the min. length 14" and your best 5 bass. This follows TPWD rules and would be the same as other freshwater tourneys. Its a bummer for the guy that catches 2 or 3 bigger fish only to get knocked out by someone with 5 dinks. A bonus with this min. is that you don't have to judge as many fish. Is this going to be a "series" where cumulative points are accrued towards an overall win?

Good point Search. I'm inclined to agree, but then again, the vine and Raybob CAN produce great fish, but the chances of producing the 100 inch stringer on these lakes is much lower than say LBL, Austin and Fayette. Those two lakes can be really tough some days, so much so that the handful of anglers who manage a full sack really do deserve to be in the running. Fork not so much, though.

Keep in mind both Fork and Grapevine are slot lakes.

I already see a logistical nightmare with this location. Not a lot of parking and relatively few bass holes for tournaments.

I've noticed in HOW tournaments that sandies are a common catch. I think a multispecies is fine for HOW, but not what I want to see in a dedicated tournament trail.

Like gutcheck mentioned, our lakes up here are very different than Fayette, Bastrop, Lady, etc. From what I've seen from running HOW tournaments I believe not requiring a minimum is the right way to go. Yes, there will be an angler of the year and I will probably use the same point system KATS used (1st = 100, 2nd = 99, etc.).

Agree with most of this... But I think Bert's on to something with the Brazos thang... Talk about a unique and AWESOME event! Perhaps run a 'staggered' launch? With different anglers having different launch and weigh ins maybe? Kinda like a Pole position maybe? Just a thought. I agree that logistics would be tough, but wow how cool would a tourney below 16 be?

This sounds pretty cool! Im gonna try and get my buddies on board with this and see if we cant make it out there!

Also you should do the cards that have a certain word that is picked out on the day of the tournaments so they can be taken with the fish in the photo to prevent cheating of any kind.

Make sure you have tiebreaker rules in place for each tourney and for the series (found this out the hard way, LOL)
For the individual tourneys, in event of a tie, I would look at their 2nd biggest fish, then, if still tied, flip a coin for the position (the flip never happened over 6 years).
For the series, I would calculate all of the tied anglers fish caught instead of looking at the places they scored. For example...
joe=1st,5th, and 3rd
jim=2nd,3rd, and 4th
they'er still tied! If you tally the totals of all the fish they caught it might look like this...
joe= 50"+30"+40=120"
jim= 45+55+37=137" making him the winner and joe gets 2nd place overall. Just some friendly advice

how about a catfish division...

Just the kind of thing we need in north tx!

Maybe (maybe) throw in the Brazos as a bonus tournament.
Look at Hamm Creek Park near Rio Vista. Good launch and lots of parking as well as centrally located.

Add Texoma?

If this years tournaments pan out I'm sure Josh will see the need to add more tournaments to the list in 2013.
I see some lakes that would be close and fun to have a tournament on.
That being said, This years attendance will be critical to 2013 expansion. So if you want to see this grow or even continue. I would suggest finding people to grow this event. From the looks of interest on this thread I can already see this series is going to be a big hit. Lets just make sure we not only talk about it here on the thread but also attend the tournaments. It would be great to see people try to make all three if possible. Maybe a angler of the year prize/trophy could be given?

I'm looking forward to the fun and the learning opportunity for people to fish together and learn more about bass fishing.

I've been hoping something like this would happen in north Texas for a couple years now. I just put my Outback up for sale here in the classifieds so that I can get a Pro Angler. This next year is going to be great!

I am in! I would love a little competition!