It’s safe to say no one knows more about kayak fishing tournaments than Drew Gregory. The longtime tournament competitor has hosted a tournament series and recently won the Bassmaster Kayak Series Championship.
It’s also safe to say, Drew Gregory is a deviant from the traditional—he’s famous for fishing his own way and winning.
So, when Gregory announced he was creating a new kayak fishing tournament trail, we expected an out-of-the-box approach to kayak competition. But no one could have anticipated the Kayak Adventure Series.
Drew Gregory’s Kayak Adventure Series Takes Competition to the People
“It’s all of the things I like and none of the things I don’t like,” Gregory explains. On the mainstream tournament trail, Gregory is cheered for pushing the limits and criticized for testing the rules, so his first move was eliminating many of the rules. He says, “If a rule doesn’t make it easier for an angler to catch fish and have fun, I don’t need it.”
The result is the Kayak Adventure Series (KAS), an amalgamation of Gregory’s original River Bassin’ Series with elements of the old Boondoggle social gatherings. Gregory describes KAS as “a mixture of camaraderie and fellowship with a competitive angle to appeal to a diverse field of anglers.”
Designing a Different Tournament Series
Since the River Bassin’ trail ended, Gregory has heard from fans looking for a similar series. So, Gregory set the KAS trail in off-the-beaten-track fishing destinations. Instead of limiting the tournament to one lake or river, KAS has a 100-mile inbounds area. “The event in Michigan has 11 lakes inbounds,” he says. The area includes moving water and ponds, so anglers can bring their strengths to familiar water.
For a change of venue, Gregory based each event in a small- to medium-sized town with a historic theater. The small town is happy to invite hundreds of anglers to their local fishing scene and the theater provides a public space to award prizes and show video clips of the tournament action on the big screen. Gregory plans to open the awards ceremony to the public, so locals and visitors can celebrate together.
The venue is just the tip of the iceberg. Gregory set the schedule and created award categories to encourage the social element. Anglers check in on Thursday, but fishing doesn’t start until 3 p.m. on Friday. “You can stay up all night and hang out and then participate in a big brunch and seminar series before the afternoon session.” The schedule helps weekend warriors remain competitive with a dawn to 3:30 p.m. fishing window on Saturday. Gregory explains, “Even if you can only fish Saturday, you still have a good chance to win the tournament.”
But wait, there’s more. Gregory monkeyed around with the rules and categories to further encourage a diverse field of anglers. In addition to the traditional categories awarding cash payouts for the largest fish and longest stringer, anglers also score prizes by collecting the most trash or catching the smallest fish. Gregory calls the small fish category micro bagging.
“If winning with a big fish is out of reach, switch tactics and target a stringer of the smallest bass,” he says. The tournament rules even allow fishing more than one rod, trolling, portaging and wading—tactics prohibited in other tournaments.
Professional Anglers Jump On Board
While KAS is designed to attract amateurs, the pros are also excited about the new tournament trail. Jody Queen is a longtime competitor and a collaborator on the new series. “I look forward to loading the camper trailer and bringing my wife,” he says.
Queen is attracted to the lighthearted vibe, but he says the competition will be stiff. “The format attracts a different type of competitor,” he says. The series will have a championship and name an angler of the year, so serious anglers are shooting to qualify for the final event.
Agreeing with Gregory, Queen says fishing the tournament trail is a lot of work. “This series is a break from the hectic life as a pro tournament angler.”
The biggest significance of the KAS is what it says about the kayak fishing tournament landscape. With three other professional bass trails on the calendar, the market has widened to include an event for amateur anglers looking for a national trail and a social scene reminiscent of earlier kayak fishing tournaments.
A decade ago, anglers described the kayak tournament scene as friendly and casual, something lost in modern professional tournament fishing. Gregory’s KAS is designed to bring the fellowship back into a championship.
The first event, called Shoaliepalooza, took place in Thomaston, Georgia, with anglers targeting shoal bass on the Flint River. With hundreds of anglers in town, the locals threw a street party to coincide with the tournament. The festival atmosphere encouraged anglers to attend for the friendship and the competition. “It’s my idea of the perfect tournament,” Gregory says.
Watch Drew Gregory on the Kayak Adventure Series:
New tournament series breaks all the rules. | Feature photo: Courtesy Kayak Adventure Series
