KAYAKWARS GROWING ,,, GETTING HUGE

THE NORTHEAST DIVISION HAS 691 ANGLERS AND 60 TEAMS ,, THATS NUTS DUDES

I'm still not sure what to make of this tournament.

North of cape cod we basically only have 3 saltwater fish on the list, stripers, blues, and winter flounder. And the blues are here for at most 6 weeks. The freshwater sizes for the normal fish are pretty much tropy sizes around here, but in the next week or so when the ice leaves the ponds I bet some of the NEKF teams will more actively post some fish. But we do have an advantage with the stripers with the trophy size at 37" so I guess that makes up for the quantity of species.

But it will be fun anyway and I signed up with a bunch of VA guys just to stay in the mix.

thats it slappy ,, its all about fun ,,have a good time and enjoy it

We're kind of in the same boat in southern NJ. While we have a great fishery, we are seasonal and see our best fishing during the spring and fall. There are quite a few species on the NE list that I've never even seen in person. LOL Like you said though, the trophies make up ground fast and we look forward to JBay and NEKF to catch them. See you soon!

jbay is where most of us will really get rolling on this tourney. Lets hope the weaks show up this year.

The bass should be showing up in bigger numbers down there any minute now right? The hold over fish are starting to get much more active now, but we won't get our first fresh ones til early May.

Slappy - nice job on the stripers so far in Massachusetts! I didn't know that there were big wintering populations in New England other than the Housatonic, Conneticut, and Thames Rivers. You were catching so many bass I thought that you were one of the Chesapeake guys! They were catching them good at the same time as you.

I live about 25 minutes away from JBAY (although it never turns out that short because of all the traffic) and they are already catching stripers in there, but these are mostly resident fish as well. I haven't seen much movement from the local stripers around where I fish in the winter, which isn't a great sign, as they are usually on the move by now, but they have been become very active and are feeding much more heavily over the last two weeks.

There are fish moving down the Hudson as of last week as far north as almost Albany (which is also late for there) - lots of those fish will be in JBAY in a couple of weeks. Some guys I know are trying around Inwood on JBAY this weekend, as there people have already seen menhaden back there and at the North Channel Bridge, but the good fishing won't start for a couple of weeks at least. When it happens, it will explode. Some guys I know are a scouting mission in the back, back bay by the East Radar Pier this weekend.

As for weakfish, I wouldn't bet on them making a comeback yet, but you never know. The fishery has been in drastic decline since 2005. I target them heavily each year on the yak, and last year was the only season that I didn't catch them - this is after extremely strong years in 2007 and 2008, and a decent year in 2009 for big fish . . . . summer run wasn't so great that year though (we get two runs - spring-run spawners from the beginning of May until the first week of June and a summer run of smaller fish from August to late-September). In 2010 - nothing. JBAY got no spawners last year (not one reported fish that I saw) after a fantastic year for trophy fish in 2009. Great South Bay got a run in spring, JBAY got a two week shot of summer-run smaller fish in August. . . . and there is no fall run of big fish on menhaden anymore.

Good luck this year and I hope to see you at JBAY or the Shootout. I went to the shootout for the first time last year and really had a great time. I've also vacationed in the upper cape for the last two years in Orleans - great fishery there.