KBF (Kayak Bass Fishing) just held back to back events at East West Harbor in Northern Ohio. Robert Weiker captured his 2nd straight title there, and Nate Hall took the win in the Sunday event.
Saturday
Robert Weiker:
“So east/west harbor is one of My favorite events of the year since I have history there after moving from Tennessee to Ohio. We took the family up Monday and we practiced Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and my first spot on the third cast on Tuesday I ended up catching a 19 1/2 incher dragging a big worm. Of course that got me pretty excited because last years area was still hot. I spent the next three days doing a little pre-fishing for a couple buddies of mine and building on what I learned the first day.”
“Tournament day started off hot 13 keepers the first hour but some really good sticks were all around me and my bite slowed way down but I stuck with casting that 10” worm over the grass and after 8 o’clock it seemed every bite I got was bigger and bigger. Throughout the day up to 11:30 I upgraded my whole limit and my last bite of the day was the kicker 20.75 incher that bumped me over 5 inches into the lead which I held on to all day and ended up winning by 3.5 inches with 95”.”
“One thing special about this tournament is I won it last year but my youngest daughter couldn’t make it. She was so disappointed she didn’t get to be in the big check pic with dad and the rest of the family. Friday night I just knew in my gut it was going to be my day and she was going to get that pic with all of us. I told her I was going I win it and she says “ dad you don’t have to win to impress me your the best fisherman in the world no matter what” yup old dad got something in his eye at that moment lol and had to win now.”
Sunday
Nate Hall:
“I headed up Thursday morning to start off my prefishing and went out on West Harbor where I was able to find some quality, but was not able to find enough numbers to build a confidence in the area. So Friday I went out on East Harbor and found the numbers but not the size, so decided that was a no go as well. Saturday I decided to try something new and headed to the Portage River where, again i was not able to find much quality. Saturday night I decided to go back to the area I prefished on Thursday knowing that the quality was there and I just needed to figure out how to trigger a few more bites than I had in practice.”
“I love fishing thick shallow cover and decided that would be my best bet at finding both the quality and quantity I was looking for. I started off the morning slinging around a jackhammer while I waited for the sun to come up and it to get a bit brighter out. After about an hour and a half of doing that and only catching one fish, I decided it was time to try flipping and punching the thick stuff. There was a small patch of thick pads near where I was at the time and headed over, figuring if I could get one out of there, the bigger pad fields should also be holding fish. After flipping for about 5 minutes I pulled an 18 out and knew that this was what I was going to do the rest of the day.”
“I headed to the next pad field which was a bit bigger and went to work. This is where the magic happened. I caught an 18, then a 16.5, then a 17.25. This gave me a limit of 86.75 and I honestly thought that I probably was not going to be able to upgrade much more. But then the next fish i caught was my 20.25 which showed me that I could indeed improve upon limit quite a bit. I then continued to catch a 17.75 and a few others around 16-17 inches. All of these fish came out of a 30 yard section of pads. From there I started flipping through the rest of the pads I could find as I worked my way back towards the ramp and was able to catch one last upgrade that was 18.25. All of my fish were caught on a black and blue Berkley PitBoss with a 3/4 ounce tungsten weight.”
Full results can be found here: https://app.fishingchaos.com/tournament/2021-realtree-fishing-kbf-trail-eastwest-harbor-i-presented-by-dee-zee