Oklahoma Kayak Anglers

"Nothing in this world is worth having or doing unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty", these words were spoken by Theodore Roosevelt and still ring true today. Insert current events and thus is the life of a kayak angler on the OKA tournament trail. The Oklahoma Kayak Anglers have crowned a new Angler of the Year Champion as well as a Newcomer of the Year and it was no easy task hearkening back to the words spoken by Roosevelt. Anglers Jason Ray and Jack Miller will take home the prestigious AOY, and NOY trophies the AOY Prize of  $1,000 and the NOY Prize of $500 Gift Card to Oklahoma Kayak. Finally OKA Sponsor Dobyns Rods will be sponsoring Ray the AOY Champion for the 2021 season. Nearly every OKA event was closely contested and the same is true with the final AOY standings. We had a tie at the top spot between anglers Josh Barlow and Jason Ray with 489 points. A tiebreaker was needed to settle on a champion and that was the angler with the most wins on the OKA tour...

By Josh Barlow “Practice makes perfect” is the adage. Though far from perfect, the practice I had was a big confidence booster. Driving home from the previous tournament at Lake McMurtry, I audibly told myself, “I have 49 days to get ready for Lake Tenkiller“. The practice started that night and for a month, it was a constant barrage of map reading, weather watching, digging up old tournament weights/lengths, watching the professional tournament held there, and even joining the local Tenkiller scuba blogs/pages. My thirst for another win was unrelenting. I was going to do as much off the water research I could do since I had never fished it.    The size of the lake was daunting, even if I had a boat, I could not fish 13,000 acres in 5 days of practice. In my research, I had found several areas that held many different types of structure and cover. I whittled my list down to 4 areas and planned to cover an area each day of practice.  After almost a month of res...

I left work Thursday evening and got to the hotel around 2 A.M. I had Friday to prefish and due to Hurricane Laura, all the local hotels were either out of power or were fully booked by power line crews. So, I was forced to stay about a 45 minute drive away. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of time to prefish, so I had to make the most out of time. I first wanted to try and establish a pattern and then, if possible, try and find an area to fish. I had a few places that I wanted to check out, but due to time constraints, was not able to hit all those spots. I was able to figure out a pattern relating to baitfish but was not able to find a good area that I liked. Thankfully, when loading up my kayak at the ramp, I was able to talk to a local fisherman. I asked him about some of the other areas that I was looking at and with his help was able to lock in my starting spot for Saturday. Saturday morning, I ended up launching at a spot that I didn’t prefish. We could launch at 6 A.M. and...

Well, just like that here we are at the end of the 2020 season for the Oklahoma Kayak Anglers. What a season it has been, the season has winded its way through covid, social unrest, cancellations, as well as lakes big and small but one thing has remained constant. That constant is the determination and camaraderie of OKA anglers. Anglers showed up in droves to compete with each other as friends and competitors alike. Moreover,  anglers set records in attendance, limits, fish caught, and overall payouts. With this said, there is one more regular season tournament that will set the stage for the coming postseason. OKA Event #8 at Lake Tenkiller Presented by Nabatak Outdoors Inc.     Lake Tenkiller is a 12,900 acre reservoir in northeastern, Oklahoma. Tenkiller was impounded for flood control, and hydroelectric power by harnessing the power of its main inflow the Illinois river. Both the river and the lake are in the Cookson Hills of the Oz...

Let me start off with a little bit of a hot take: The state of Oklahoma has arguably the best public waters for bass fishing in this region of the country and the same can be said about its kayak anglers. Now as you know I am not a talking head on ESPN or CNN trying to grab you with a sound bite. For evidence look no further than our 2 - month online events. It takes 115 - 116", to win 1st place and 100" doesn't even get you in the top 10. For comparison take World renown bass fishing state Florida for example. I took a peek at their last 2 KBF State Challenge tournaments for July, and August respectively. The July State Challenge took 115.50" to win 1st place and had 7 bass measured over 23".  August saw a 108.50" winning total with 2 bass measuring over 24" and a total of 4 measuring over 23". The OKA Dog Days totals are as follows: 115.75" to win, 12 anglers measuring over 100", 14 bass measured over 23", and 3 of which over 24...