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!

NTKT tournment series is a great idea. my brother and i are, new to kayak fishing and are looking forward to being in this tournment. please keep me informed on the dates or any changes. good times!!!!

OK, I've done some research on dates and have found that very few tournaments have yet to put up a 2012 schedule. So, right now I'm having to plan the dates around my personal schedule.

So tentatively here are the dates.
March 17th - Lake Ray Roberts
April 14th - Lake Fork
May 5th - Lake Grapevine

Again, these are not set in stone. May 5th is the only available weekend in May that I have, so if that date doesn't work the tournament will be moved to June 2. Which may cause me to push Fork to the next weekend (21st) to spread things out a little better.

Thanks for all the input so far.

I need some help about weigh-in locations for Lake Fork, so toss something out there. Lake Ray Roberts will be one of the state parks and Grapevine will be either Oak Grove Park or Murrell Park. These sites will be for the weigh-in only as you will be allowed to launch at any public launch site on the lake. We will be do a shotgun start from a central location; for instance, Lake Grapevine will probably start at Grapevine Mills Mall.

March 24th is the lake Travis tournament for KATS.

LOL, I just saw that. I'll think about it some more.

They are still voting on option #1 or option #2 but the votes
are leaning to #2.
Would a weekend or two earlier in March work with you?

Option 1
Bastrop Saturday January 28th
Fayette Saturday February 25th
Travis Saturday March 24th
Stillhouse Saturday April 28th
KATS Wildcard (Decker) Saturday May 19th
KATS Classic (TBA) TBD September

Option 2
Bastrop Saturday January 28th
Fayette Saturday February 25th
Travis Saturday March 24th
Stillhouse Saturday April 28th
KATS Wildcard (Decker) Saturday May 12th
KATS Classic (TBA) Saturday June 2nd

I changed it to the 17th.

I vote spead it out and make the June tournament at Grapevine.

Shaun you know your not going to make the Classic

NAAAaaaaa... I'm not setting my goals high this year. I'm just testing the waters.

Just playing with ya!

I'm playing around with a logo/sticker design. Thoughts?

This is a cool idea. Like someone else mentioned I've been waiting for something like this in North Texas for a while.

Just one comment is that Ray Roberts will have the coldest water of all three lakes in March and that lake does fish tough sometimes at that time of the year, IMO.

Good looking logo.

Cool logo! Reminds me of the Lone Star Beer logo.

Like the dates and like the logo. Can't wait!

AAGGGHHHH! I hate that I work weekends!

At the fall meeting I asked many prominent kayak anglers up here about which lakes and in what month to hit them. After the discussion everyone agreed that this was a good rotation to fish each lake. I like it and am already looking forward to Fork.

A little variation. I like how this is a little thinner.

A touch of color.

Looks good can not wait

Logo looking cool. Hope I can fish the whole series!

Cool logo, I like the idea of having the Brazos, I'd probably fish there before Fork as that's a hellova drive for us guys up here to go kayak fish. The only thing itd suck to miss Fork because it'll probably be the decision maker.

I will be interested in participating. I bass fish Grapevine on kayak when I can't backseat.

Would it be a good idea to put something like in our signatures to help get the word out?

Sure if you want to Tekell.

When will the dates be finalized?

Dates will be finalized very soon.

Thanks. Just need to make sure I can get off or a sub for em.

cool logo!

Anyone have a recommendation for a weigh in location at Lake Fork?

We could do it at Tiffany's Restaurant which is located at Lake Fork Marina.

Tiffanys has AWESOME pie!!!!!!

Getting closer!!

Do we have dates and can we suggest, trying to scheduale around other tournaments?

That's a nice logo! Hope to have a yak and be able to join you on some of these.

Neumie, sounds great! I'm interested.And your initial rules look real good. Keep it simple. I was a tournament director for American Bass in Northern California for 6 years and your simple rules are best. I'm looking forward to your tournaments.

It would be better if one of those was a fly rod.

I've added on to the rules to clarify points system, measuring fish, etc, but nothing too hard to understand. Basically it's the same rules as most other CPR kayak fishing series have used.

The problem with Tiffany's is there is a Basschamps tourney weighing in there that day.

April 1st (Dodge Mega Bass) and 14th would be the wrong two weekends on Fork I'd think.

OK these are the dates for the first season for NTKT.

Lake Ray Roberts
March 24, 2012
Check-In: 6:00 am
Shotgun Start: 6:50 am
Launch: 7:30 am
Weigh-In: 3:00 pm

Check-In/Start Location: Sanger High School Football parking lot
Weigh-In Location: Isle du Bois State Park
Map

Lake Fork
April 21, 2012
Check-In: 5:30 am
Shotgun Start: 6:20 am
Launch: 7:00 am
Weigh-In: 2:30 pm

Check-In/Start Location: Brookshire Brothers Grocery Emory, TX
Weigh-In Location: TBD
Map

Lake Grapevine
June 2, 2012
Check-In: 5:00 am
Shotgun Start: 5:50 am
Launch: 6:30 am
Weigh-In: 2:00 pm

Check-In/Start Location:Grapevine Mills Mall (near Sun & Ski Sports)
Weigh-In Location: TBD
Map

Are there rules to the tournaments? Trolling Motor? Measurement devices? Etc.? I can't wait !!!!

I will have a website with more detailed rules and locations up by this weekend (I hope). But to answer your questions:

No trolling motors allowed

You must bring your own measuring device and I will ask to see it before the start of the tournament. I recommend the Hawg Trough or Check-It Stik. I would ask that you take a sharpie to the measuring lines to add contrast on the Hawg Trough.

Fish must be able to lay across the measuring device so you can take a picture of the entire fish.

I'm gonna say with confidence that there will be no trolling motors allowed...

I really like how the dates are spaced out a little bit. This will definitely make it easier for people to attend, myself included.

I'm really looking forward to the competition. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

I'm glad gutcheck is so confident

The only reason for the comment above is that many of the kayak fishing programs around the country especilly in California, are starting to allow electric motors. The reason being is to allow older and disabled anglers that can't paddle as well as others still compete. I'm not quite there yet, but having emphysema and part of my left lung removed, paddling can be a major chore. But I do my best and just try and fish close to the launch. Just don't want you all to be close minded.

hdluvrs,

In my response prior to gutcheck I said that no trolling motors would be allowed. When writing the rules for this year I did consider allowing trolling motors for those with disabilities, but decided against it. I will look in to it again after this first season.

I'm really looking forward to fishing your first year tournaments and will do all I can to help promote them. It's going to be fun!!

Meant no disrespect to anyone with disabilities or health limitations, hdluvr. I was responding to JAldersons question... Since he didn't mention anything about such things, however, I was assuming that he was just talking about general use of tms...

These tourneys are all roadrunners, so the paddling part of them is already minimized to some extent... On some level, it seems to me that a kayak fishing tournament should be about paddling too...

Yes gutcheck, I agree and like I said, I'm not to that point yet and Kayaking was part of my rehab for my lungs. I love to paddle, just can't as much as I'd like. Was just wanting to point out that there are many out there that can't, but still love being out on the water in that small craft. Let's be honest......there is nothing better than hooking a fish in a kayak.

I just saw this thread for the first time. I am definitely interested in this. I'm not sure what rules you are planning on going with, but if the TPWD slot rules at Fork, the winning fish will more than likely be a 15-15/16" fish. Also, more than one person will have that size fish within a tenth of a pound from each other. That's what I've always disliked about our Fork tourney, that 24" monster is tough to find and a person with the lucky fish, not the biggest, is the winner. I have zero experience with a kayak tourney or a CPR tourney, just sharing my experiences at Fork with the slot limit. Thanks for your efforts, hope to attend.

The tournament will be a catch photo release, so you're allowed to take pictures of bass that fall in the slot. All fish must be returned to the water after you take a picture.

Neumie any luck on the website? And is it going to be on your "The Waters of Texas" or one just for the Kayak trail?

Will pontoons be allowed? I'm interested if they are allowed.

TA

This will be more fair on Fork, I like it.