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Winter 2022
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kayaking and fishing at the same time. Sometimes I paddle five miles and don’t even know it because I’ve had so much fun fishing.
WB: Have you noticed that your time spent kayak fishing has changed your bass boat fishing?
WILLIAMS: Yes! Definitely! We are spoiled in a bass boat. If we don’t like a spot, we just move. Go over here. Go over there. Just keep moving. We can keep changing spots until we feel comfortable; but in a kayak you don’t have that luxury and you’re stuck where you’re at. If you’re in a spot and they’re not biting, you have to persevere through it or the alternative is to paddle all the way to the truck, pull the kayak out, drive to another location and put in again. Unless you have a trolling motor; but even then, if you do, you still have to spend all the time motoring over and that cuts down fishing time. The kayak really forces you to pick a part a spot. Especially if you feel like the fish are there, but they’re just not biting, you really have to stay put, not leave, and keep trying to change your game with lure or color. Your mind can fight with you saying I want to leave, but then it says… do you really know how much it is going to take if you leave? I say… if this was a board game, bass boats would be checkers and kayaks would be chess. Because one bad move in kayak can cost the whole game and you cannot recover. So, with that experience in the kayak, now I go to the boat and feel like I can give a spot more time and focus, trying different techniques and feel comfortable about it.
WB: Aside from the obvious, what were the subtle differences that you found in bass boat and kayak competitions.
WILLIAMS: More or less same things apply, but it’s kind of crazy as a boat guy, we want to catch those fat gorditas; but those belly shirt shorties don’t mean anything in kayak event, because it goes by length instead of weight. So, they don’t give you any justice in a kayak. Now I am suddenly fishing for those long skinny ones, where as a boat guy isn’t going to want that at all?
WB: What about boards instead of scales. Did that take some getting used to?
WILLIAMS: Oh wow! You have to take
a picture of your fish on the board and if that fish wants to act up while you’re doing it, back into the water they go! Your hands are on your phone snapping pictures, they arch their back and they’re gone. If you don’t have the right picture before they’re overboard, that fish never counted. I spent two hours trying to catch this fish, I got it and I am so happy. It’s going to put me right where I need to be. I start to take the picture and it flops into the water. I got nothing! I can’t even believe it! There’s a lot of little rules about picture taking. It’s a good idea to know them!
WB: How about tackle packing? What’s changed for you about that after kayak tournaments?
WILLIAMS: You really have to dial back what you take in a kayak. The space you have and the weight you carry matters so much more. You don’t get to take all that “just in case” stuff. You also learn to fish a rod that can handle a couple of techniques, so you don’t have to pack as many rods. You have to learn to just cut off and retie another type of lure. You can’t just switch rods. You don’t want to have too much and knock stuff into the water and lose it. A lot of people have to strip down to tighty-whities and jump in the water to get their stuff; so, you really have to be conscious of what you have and that makes you think differently, even when you’re in the boat.
WB: How would you say you’ve been received by the
kayak community?
WILLIAMS: It was cool
to have a lot of kayakers
appreciate what I did for
kayaking going back to
Hobie. I mean in the boat
world; guys can look down
on kayakers because
they’re in your way. I was
guilty of it too. You want
to hurry to your spot
and you’re like come on
kayakers get out of the
way, the boats are here.
Now that I’ve been on
that side, it’s different.
Kayakers fish hard and if
those guys were fishing
from bass boats it would
be a different game. I tell
kayak guys they should
definitely fish from a boat,
and I tell boat guys they
need to try out a kayak.
I’m not saying you have
to do tournaments and
all that; but if you love
fishing, you got to try it all.
Obedie plans to fish both bass boat and kayak tournaments in the upcoming season. •