SW Kayak League Report
Steve Boekhout - 1st Place catch
“I’ve never caught a smallie out there—let alone a mongoloid.”
By “out there,” Cody Breseman meant Paradise Lake, and the “mongoloid” was the 19.25-inch smallmouth that Steve Boekhout caught near the end of Sunday afternoon’s Topwater SW Kayak League contest on the 185-acre lake.
The chunky brown bass culled a 10.5-inch largemouth and gave Boekhout 70.25 inches and the win. Breseman, of Union, fishes Paradise frequently and finished second with 68.5 inches. Kevin Hopson was third with 67 inches.
Boekhout's winning lure
Boekhout, of Fremont, Indiana, caught all his fish on a drop-shot in the four-hour tournament in which the nine plastic boat anglers had to deal with strong southerly winds.
Boekhout had two productive lures. First was a Jackall Flick Shake that he’d used to catch a 20-inch Paradise largemouth while pre-fishing Saturday. As the tourney began on Sunday, the thin, wacky-rigged worm caught only small, 8- to 10-inch bass on shallow points and flats, so Boekhout tried a larger 5-inch Yamamoto Senko in the same Watermelon Candy color and fished it deeper along drop offs.
“I was missing fish so I switched back to the Jackall and started catching 12 and 13 inchers along the drop off,” Boekhout said. With an hour left, he went back to the spot where he’d caught the 20-inch largemouth—a downed tree that extended to the drop off—and found it occupied by a bass boat.
“When they left I fished the Jackall for about 20 minutes with no luck. I switched back to the Senko and first cast I caught the smallie.”
He said the smallie and Saturday’s big largemouth were both close to bottom below the tree.
First place paid $138 and Boekhout also took the $38 big bass prize.
Paradise Tournament ResultsBreseman focused shallow, catching fish on a bone-colored Sixth Sense Speed Wake, a Megabass Vision Oneten jerkbait and a Louie’s Lure 5-inch soft plastic stickbait with a Buckeye wacky weight. Second place paid $80.
Hopson, of Crooked Lake, Ind., also stayed shallow catching his fish on a Blue Fox Vibrax Spin Minnow and a Missile Ned Bomb on a 1/15-ounce head. He won a $10 gift card from league sponsor Mainstream Tackle & Outdoors in Galesburg.
Next up for the SW Kayak League is Fish Lake near Marcellus, Sunday, October 30. The tournaments are open to anyone with a kayak, a cell phone and a Ketch measuring board. Entry fee is $35. The contests use a catch-photo-release format wherein anglers take cell phone pictures of their fish on the measuring boards and submit it through the free Topwater Tracker app. For more info check out the topwaterseries.com website or Topwater Nation on Facebook.