On The Water

I recently had the opportunity to cover the TBF Federation National Championship bass fishing tournament on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. I rode in a bass boat and followed some competitors as they fished for the "Living The Dream" package which is basically an all expenses paid year as a professional bass angler on the FLW  Tour. This was a very exciting opportunity as I am a bass fisherman myself and have seen many of these tournaments from the bank but this time I was finally able to get out on the water.

Photographing and taking video of a bass fishing tournament is not as easy as it seems. You are not guaranteed to see the angler catch some fish. One first needs to decide who to follow on the take off. Hopefully the boat you are in is able to keep up with the angler you are trying to follow. Secondly, I was not familiar with the lake at all, again, hopefully your camera boat driver is.

Gerry, my camera boat driver

The next thing you need to think about is what gear do you need. I decided on the Nikon D5300 with the Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 and the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 along with both GoPro cameras and a Canon Vixia video camera. I also had the Nikon 55-300mm kit lens in my backpack.

One of the items you need to worry about is the protection of your gear as a boat ride can be extremely rough. The backpack I use, the LowePro Flipside 400 had enough room for all my gear and offered up some good protection with all the padding. I did bring a pillow along (swiped from my hotel) to place in the storage locker of the boat as added protection. All the gear needs to be stowed when you are driving in the boat as you are likely to get sprayed with water as you scoot along.

Now once you find your angler, you need to stay far enough away as to not impede his fishing but close enough to get the shot. Most if not all of my on the water images were shot with the 70-200mm lens. You also need to determine the amount of time you want to spend with that angler. When you do finally decide to leave that angler the fun begins. So, Table Rock covers about 67.5 square miles and now you need to find 1 of the other 49 bass boats somewhere on the lake while travelling about 65 MPH. Fun is!

Fishing was slow for the guys I followed. I did get some video of the anglers catching fish but no still images. I was able to get some good fishing shots of several anglers a few nice landscape and nature shots.

This was a fantastic experience and I really enjoyed this type of camera work. I am looking forward to the next time I am able to get on the water to shoot another tournament. I really liked the fact that I was able to combine two of my passions, photography and bass fishing.

Till next time...

E

kappyskeepers