It was only natural that as kayak fishing became more popular, the competitive nature of humans would lead to tournaments.
But there was one obvious shortcoming facing kayakers — how to score the fish, since the boats are too small to hold a livewell.
“That’s why we score by inches, not weight, and all of our fish can be released as they are caught,” said Dwayne Walley of Madison. He’s an avid kayaker, fisherman and tournament angler, as well as a part-time web designer.
“I love it that all our events are catch, photo and release,” he said. “After a couple of events, the Web designer side of me came up with this idea that we could develop a computer program that we could sell to tournament organizers that would provide them an automatically updating scoreboard throughout the day. It also shortens the post-tournament times from an hour or two to like 15 minutes.
“Once the organizer hits the button on the keyboard, he gets a ranking that shows the fish each angler boated, the time it was caught and the total inches. If there’s a tie, it usually goes to the fishermen who first reached the winning length. Our program tells the tournament coordinator the time of each catch.”
Walley’s program is called TourneyX.com.
“I’d been thinking of it over a year, in my head, trying to figure out how to put it together so we could cater to all tournaments big and small,” he said. “I hired a programmer and it took us about four months to figure out.”
Scoring a tournament through TourneyX.com allows an organizer to choose many formats for an event, such as a statewide event on any water on any day, as well as one- or two-day events on one lake.
“We’re definitely looking at using it for our first statewide championship this fall,” said Brad Case of the Mississippi Kayak Bass Tournament Series. “We haven’t tried it on one of our smaller events but it offers a lot to help anyone putting on an event.”
Fishermen can use smart phones or tablets to take a photo of each fish against an official ruler, upload the catch through the tournament portal and the program automatically registers the fish. If a fisherman has a limit, the program allows him the “cull” option to put a bigger fish in place of a smaller one already registered.
“When we unveiled it at the Kentucky Lake Kayak Bass Tournament, we had people coming up asking when they could start using it at their local events,” Walley said. “We’re working on a few things, including a Geo-Tracking system that allows the event director to insure fish were caught on open tournament waters.”
No software is required, Walley said, and all tournaments can be run over the Internet.
“All kayak events are catch, photo and release and I hope one day all tournaments will be run that way,” he added. “I’m not just saying that because of my program, but because it’s just better for the fisheries.”
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