BEAVERDAM LAKE -- They had little else on their minds but fish and kayaks, in roughly that order.
On Saturday, two dozen fishermen from both ends of the state converged on this subimpoundment of Falls Lake in kayaks and a couple of canoes for the first of five events this year in the Carolina Yakfish Tournament Series.
Nearly all had boats specifically designed for fishing; some came factory-equipped with fishing accoutrements, others had been modified. Rod holders and electronic fish finders were the norm.
Two of the fishermen were sponsored by kayak companies, which have increasingly marketed and designed models for fishermen.
"We take it pretty seriously," Pittsboro's Robert Dainton, 32, said, putting water into a small cup in the bottom of his hatch, allowing the transducer of his fish finder to work through the shell of his kayak.
Bahama's Gary Ribet, 32, had installed rod holders on his boat and had music flowing out of an MP3 player.
"It plays for eight hours," he said, laughing.
Kittrell's Gary Parrott, 55, converted his pier-fishing cart into a kayak carrier and wheeled his boat to water's edge.
"I never used it," Parrott said of the former purpose of the cart.
He had fashioned PVC pipe to create rod holders on the cart and his kayak.
A new group
The group met on the fishing Web site www.ncangler.com and held its inaugural tournament last fall. Dainton and two others, Joey Sullivan, 34, of Cary and Drew Haerer, 26, a graduate student at Duke, organized the tournament and set up its own Web site at www.carolinayakfish.com.
All must fish out of a boat with no motor. So canoes, kayaks, paddle boats and row boats are welcome.
The longest combination of three largemouth bass wins an event. Each participant snaps a digital photo of the catch next to a ruler with the measurement clearly shown as well as a unique identifier (a numbered sheet of paper in a plastic bag), handed out just before the tournament, to prevent cheating. The fish are immediately released.
No fisherman can submit two fish within a half-inch of each other, preventing the same fish being submitted twice.
Time to paddle
The boats headed out in different directions sometime after 8 a.m. and were to return before 3 p.m. or face penalties
Mainly spinnerbaits were used, as were crankbaits, which some trolled.
When Swansboro's Nathan Raycroft, 33, caught a 201/4-inch bass trolling a crankbait across the mouth of a cove, he "hollered" and was heard across the lake.
"She's a pig," he later said of the bass.
But Haerer caught an even bigger one, which measured 211/4 inches.
"I was shaking," he said of carefully measuring the fish.
Tough fishing
Only 10 of the two dozen boats caught fish. A storm front moved in the night before, either making bass wary and slower to bite or pushing them into deeper water.
"They're gone," Raleigh's Danny Morales said.
While fishing one cove, he had caught some big fish in earlier in the week.
Morales, 31, fishing out of a black canoe with several modifications, including a paint job with the boat's name, El Cuervo, spray-painted on its side, had pre-fished Beaverdam Lake three times.
El Cuervo also had the open mouth of a shark painted on the canoe's bow.
Using a canoe allowed him to easily place his fish finder transducer in the water, giving a more accurate temperature reading than the kayak fishermen who mounted their transducers inside their boat.
"Their readings are always going to be a little off," he said.
But he hardly had a bite in a small cove that had been recently productive for him.
"They've moved out with this colder weather," Morales said.
He caught two fish but was docked two inches for showing up 10 minutes late and wound up in eighth place.
Sullivan didn't catch a fish until late.
"At least I'm not skunked," he said after catching a fish that measured 113/4 inches. "He was a little dink, but I'm on the board."
At the finish
Haerer won the tournament with three fish totaling 49 inches.
Dainton's top three totaled 401/4 inches, enough for second place (he wasn't allowed to judge his own fish, per tournament rules).
"This was my big fear," he said of placing in the tournament he helped organize.
"Next time, I'll just write my check and not show up," Raleigh's Scott Inge said, joking.
Inge caught a whopper at the lake prefishing, but he was skunked on Saturday.
Several of the fishermen stuck around and talked. Fishermen can often relate with each other, but when fishermen get together that have the same narrow interests, such as kayak fishing, the passion can really flow from their mouths.
As Dainton chatted with Wes Webster of Spencer, the topic turned to different species but with the same vessel.
Webster spoke about big river catfish in the 40-pound range.
"Can you imagine the sleigh ride that would be in a kayak?" Dainton said.
