NA Willy Dino Tournament

(2nd: Andrew Insinga, 1st: Mark Veary, 3rd: Michole Jensen)

(1st Place Fish- Mark Veary)

Saturday January 15th Next Adventure hosted their first annual “Next Adventure Willy Dino Tournament”.  This was a kayak fishing tournament targeting sturgeon, meaning that all angling needed to be done from a kayak.  Saturday was a great day to be out fishing, the air temperature was in the mid 50’s and rain was forecasted, which would keep traffic down on the water.  River levels were a bit high, but manageable with only a few logs moving down river.  There were ten competitors, for this event.  Most split into two groups, with a crew of four on the Columbia River and a group of five guys on the 

Willamette River.  One competitor who was fishing solo, managed to fish both. 

Fishing was slow on both rivers, but in the end six sturgeon were caught by a total of three anglers.  All the fish were caught on the Willamette River.  Mark Veary landed the largest fish of the day, a 39 incher.  He also landed a 36 inch fish and lost a fish well over 5 ft boat side before pictures could be taken.  Second place went to Andrew Insinga for his 30.5 inch fish.  He also caught a little 22 inch shaker.  Even though he was not able to measure his fish because he was worried about it tipping his kayak, 

Michole Jensen came in third with a sturgeon of unknown size. 

After a long day of fishing all the competitors headed back to the Next Adventure Paddle Sport Center for some refreshments, a raffle, a fishing movie and award ceremony.  The tournament sponsors, Next Adventure, Stohlquist, Neosport, Dry Case, Immersion Research (IR) and Kayak Angler provided some sweet gear for the raffle and all the competitors were able to bring home prizes.   Trophies were awarded to the top three finishers.  Overall the tournament went off without a hitch and all the participants left happy.  With the success of this tournament Next Adventure is planning on hosting at least one other kayak fishing tournament this year, and the Second Annually Willy Dino Tournament next year.

See you on the water,

-Nate Olken

(2nd Place Fish- Andrew Insinga)

(3rd Place Fish- Michole Jensen)

(A little video Jeff put together from the Colombia fishing crew)

(NA Fishing Team member Jeff Anderson on his experience at the Tournament)

Michael, Isaac, and myself launched out of Kelly Point park on the Columbia shortly before 8am to nice weather and a gentle river flow.  There was a line of power boaters down river from us but no one else around where we were except for a couple of bank anglers.  The weather became progressively worse as the day went on.  Fog rolled in and out while the rain started slow but grew to the point where it was downright dumping buckets by the time we headed in.  We each moved a few times throughout our time on the water.  Radio chatter from the power boats seemed to line up with what we were experiencing - a pretty slow day.  There was chatter of a shaker being caught here and there, but nothing to write home about.  Isaac had a few bights, one of which stuck but ended up being a sculpin.  Michael and I were chased out of our last spot of the day by a pretty beefy container ship which provided us with something interesting to look at on our peddle back to the launch.  

Fishing’s easy, it’s the catching that can be the hard part.

Tight lines!

-Jeff Anderson

(Willamette River)

(Columbia River)

(NA Represent!)

(Tight Lines)

(After party at NA's Paddle Sports Center)

NA would like to thank all the sponsors and participants that made the first annual Willy Dino Tourney such a success.  Thanks also to all photographers who caught the action to share with us all.