KCCA Harvest Moon Classic!

By Paul Scott

In 2021, the pandemic travel restrictions were finally lifted across the United States, so I had a chance to visit my family in Illinois. During my trip, I participated in a carp fishing tournament and won. After winning that tournament, I realized how much I missed and enjoyed the friendly competition and wanted to fish in another one in 2022. In the winter of 2021, I posted on the CAG Facebook Forum that I was interested in knowing if there were any carp fishing tournaments scheduled for 2022.

It was not long before people started to post about different tournaments being held at different venues across the United States. It seemed that almost everyone was ready to start fishing and competing again after the pandemic. Unfortunately, most of the events were far away from me out in the eastern part of the United States. I knew it would not be possible for me to travel that far by car and the total costs would be too great. As luck would have it, one person from the KCCA posted about the tournament they were going to be hosting in Missouri.

This carp fishing tournament was perfect for me because the entry fee was only $250 and the driving distance was reasonably close to Minot, North Dakota, where I live. It was a state championship of the team variety, so it is what I would consider a major or important tournament that usually draws the interest of top-level competition. It was also being held in a state where I had never competed before, and I thought if I could place, I would be able to add this state to my carp fishing tournament resume. So, I contacted the KCCA and received more information about the tournament.

The tournament was called the KCCA Harvest Moon Classic and was a two-person team-style event held Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. The venue, the Lawson City Park Lake, was located in Lawson, Missouri. Only twelve teams were permitted to compete because of the small size of the venue and the limited number of swims available. This would be the only major carp fishing tournament held in Missouri in 2022 and, possibly, ever.

I had won a similar team-style state championship carp tournament before, so this kind of event was nothing new for me.

As a member of Team Fish Fighters, I won one in Indiana with teammate James Sanders and finished second place in another one in Illinois with my wife, Dr. Laura Zucca-Scott. Both of these tournaments were called state championships and considered important or major carp fishing events.

I knew this tournament in Missouri would be no different as some of the best anglers would be there to fish the event. So, I contacted the KCCA and secured my spot for the event.

The next step was to find a teammate. Some of my oldest friends and fishing buddies back in Illinois have said they wanted to compete in a carp fishing tournament with me for years, so I contacted them. Unfortunately, everyone had prior commitments that weekend and could not fish the tournament.

North Dakota stays frozen until about May, then you start to see some open water. Carp fishing really does not start here until late May or early June because it is just too cold with water temperatures staying below 50 degrees. So, I knew practicing for this event was not going to be easy.

My first thought was to search the Internet and find out everything I could about the venue, especially how carp were caught from the lake. Although there were some photos taken by the KCCA, there was not much to go on the Internet.

The only information I could find was that standard carp fishing rigs caught at least one carp out of the lake, the lake was full of Channel Catfish, and the lake was very weedy.

The tournament was set for September, and competitors could not fish the lake a full month prior to the event. I was visiting my family in Illinois in early June and decided I would stop by at the lake and pre-fish it to get an idea of what I could expect since I had not been able to find any other information on the Internet about fishing this lake for carp.

As it turned out, some of the other anglers were having the same issue finding teammates so some of us decided to fish the tournament as solo-person teams. Ironically, three of us that did not have teammates ended up pegged side by side, and we collectively decided to help one another during the tournament with netting, but more on that later.

I drove to the lake and found that there was a paved path going around the lake for runners, which I used for scouting for carp. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any signs of carp activity during my exploration so decided to fish close to the parking lot and bathrooms for the rest of the day. The road leading to the lake was going to be closed off at night for road construction according to a sign, so I was only able to fish during the daytime and did not have a chance to fish the lake at night. June is often a warmer month and sometimes the carp switch to feeding at night, so it was not surprising when I did not catch a single carp during my twoday pre-fishing trip.

However, I did observe some carp activity. Two large carp surfaced near a corner swim which would later be named the “ACE peg” and three smaller carp surfaced together in front of an overhanging tree off a point between what would later be numbered pegs 7 and 8. However, I had a chance to talk to several of the locals but either they did not know anything about the carp in the lake or had conflicting information. For instance, some people said there were very few carp in the lake and others said there were lots of carp in the lake, but what they all seemed to agree on was that the lake contained carp and many of them were big fish. As I was packing to leave and go back to the hotel on the second day, I found a carp rig. It was a hair-rigged hook loaded with three pieces of plastic corn, so from this rig, I deduced that the carp anglers must be using method to fish the lake because tossing out plastic corn without a method ball is not very practical.

It was now the week prior to the Harvest Moon Classic and the KCCA had added video footage on their Facebook page with lots of details about each pegged swim. Some swims were adjacent to the old creek channels and others had some major underwater structures that carp liked to visit.

The wind was supposed to be blowing in the direction of pegs ACE through JACK during the two days of the tournament with the strongest winds blowing right at the ACE peg where I had seen those two large carp rolling during my pre-fishing trip to the lake. It seemed to me that the ACE peg would probably fish very well because it was an end peg back inside a lake corner next to the dam. It certainly had everything going for it, but I had my heart set on another peg.

Remember, I also saw three carp surface in front of that overhanging tree, which was located between pegs 7 and 8. Pegs 7 and 8 were located in the middle of the lake off a point. There was also a beach structure out in front of peg 8, which is often a great place to catch carp and catfish in small lakes like this, based on my experience.

The wind would be blowing across that point out in front of peg 7. The current would whip around the corner of that tree right in front of peg 8, so for those reasons, I decided the peg I wanted the most was peg 8. I also would have been happy with peg 7 and the ACE peg, if I did not get peg 8.

Now that I am older, I have trouble driving because my stomach gives me problems, so I have found I cannot eat or drink anything or stay on the road for more than eight hours at a time.

As a result, it took two days to reach the lake which was thirteen hours away. However, I timed it so I would have one full day to recover in a hotel room before heading to the lake to camp and compete. I spent that day walking the lake and checking out each swim to get some idea about what was going on with the lake and which pegs might be the best ones to get for the tournament.

Unfortunately, Peg 5 seemed to be the best peg, but it had been eliminated. I saw several large carp surface at this peg but was shocked to hear it had been removed along with pegs 6, 4, and 3 since some teams had withdrawn due to a scheduling conflict with another event.

This is why I think it is important that organizers talk to each other and try to schedule events far enough apart so that competitors have a chance to fish multiple events.

I also discovered that I had left my castable fish and depth finder at home, which I purchased specifically with this tournament in mind. Way to go Paul!

On the day of the tournament (Friday), I arrived early, but everyone was already there except for a few anglers. One team from Arizona had registered, but never showed up or canceled. However, everyone else was there, and the anglers were all very serious about winning this tournament.

The event started with a Q&A section where the rules were read and explained and then the anglers had a chance to ask for clarifications. For this tournament, the teams could only count their four largest carp towards their total weight. Teams did not have to catch all four carp to win a prize: They could win with fewer than four carp if their total weight was still the heaviest, but only each teams’ four largest carp would count.

This is a typical total weight carp fishing setup, but recent events had rules that saw anglers disqualified for not reaching the quota, so it was refreshing to hear that teams would not be penalized in that way for this tournament.

As it turned out, it was a good thing because only one team caught four carp, so everyone else would have been disqualified. I am a big fan of carp fish limits because weighing every carp puts stress on the fish and wears out the weighing stewards, but penalizing anglers for not reaching those limits despite them having caught the most weight with fewer carp is just counterintuitive in my opinion and goes against tradition.

We were all ready to start fishing, and it was time to collect fees from any team that had not yet fully paid. I did not have to worry about that because I had already fully paid back in February. The entry fee was $250, and the winning team would win $1200. There was a $20 side pot for the largest carp prize, which all of us ended up entering, adding another $200 plus cash prize that everyone had a chance to win.

There was also a side pot to win a new net for whoever caught the largest catfish of the tournament. The double-blind peg-draw followed, and, to my amazement, I got Peg 8, and I knew I had a chance to place, which is all I wanted from this tournament.

Soon we were all at our pegs with plenty of time to set up camp and get our rods ready for fishing. At peg 7 was Isaac Rojas the nicest person you could ever meet. And at peg 9 was Dr. Mike Bold, who would end up netting two of my carp and pulling a hook out of my finger during the tournament. I will be forever thankful for the best neighbors an angler could hope for. After I got my tent set up and my campsite squared away, I got all the fishing equipment into place. I had mixed up my pack bait before the peg draw, and it was ready to go so at least in that way I was ahead.

I had some issues with some of the rigs and had to tie a few before the tournament started, but luckily got them tied just before the horn sounded and the tournament began. Missouri allows the use of three rods, so I cast out my rod limit and sat back to wait for some action while I observed everything out in front of me for clues on where to fish.

Some carp anglers drag a weight on the bottom and check for changes in substrate, depth changes, and snags, but I just did not have time to do any of that, and I did not want to scare away any feeding carp out of my swim before I had a chance to catch them with all the extra casting. However, the castable depth and fish finder would have worked great right about now... Paul! I imagined my invisible teammate giving me lip about it.

Isaac came over to me briefly and said that Mike and he had agreed that, since all three of us did not have a teammate, we should help each other with netting.

I agreed, but, unfortunately, the spot was shallow next to the bank and only Mike had a pair of waders. I had not brought my knee-high boots for fear of wearing them too much and having problems with my toes going numb, which had happened to me in the past.

Most of the banks had reasonable depth, but our location seemed to be a bit shallow in close, compared with most other pegged swims. I figured Mike would probably be the one netting most of my carp if I caught any.

Right away I noticed activity on the surface out in front of my pegged swim. There was some kind of large size fish that was schooled up and mouthing the surface, and it was definitely not shad. They seemed to be feeding and kept splashing when one of them would get out of formation. I tried casting a float out to them but quickly realized that these fish were not carp. I never did get a close enough view to determine what species of fish they were exactly, but my guess was small size Bigmouth Buf- falo Suckers. However, sometimes other fish species, such as carp, feed under fish like these, so I cast out towards them on the bottom. Not long afterward, my rod started to get knocks and the line was going in and out slowly. I thought it could be line bites, so I waited patiently. After a few minutes of this activity, the rod took off with the baitrunner sounding. Then it stopped suddenly, and the line went slack.

“It is a Channel Catfish,” I said to myself.

I know the difference between a carp run and a small catfish run, and this seemed to match up with a run made by a small catfish. Moments later, I netted a Channel Catfish. Because I had no idea if any other catfish would be caught, I called for the weighing crew on the walkie-talkie that each competitor was given to use for this event.

The crew of two people came over and everyone gave a guess of what the weight might be before we weighed the fish. I blurted out that it would weigh 1 Lb. 7 oz. I had caught thousands of Channel Catfish back in the days while fishing my local sportsman club lake, and I just about could guess any weight for catfish based on just looking at it.

Sure enough, the scales read 1 Lb. 7 oz., a small Channel Catfish. Well, at least I knew the scales were accurate, I thought. After all, a catfish that big was not going to win the side pot. I had landed one weighing over 4 pounds on my pre-fishing trip (the only fish I managed to catch), so I figured it would take a much bigger one to win the big catfish prize. Soon after, my rod was back in the spot in hopes of catching a carp.

I do not have accurate data on when the carp I caught were landed because I lost my binder which had all of that information, so I will do my best here to explain when I caught fish. All I can tell you is a few minutes later one of my other rods took off, the one I had been using with a float. I had taken off the float, but, when I use floats, I typically do not use any weights. I had rigged the rod up with a dough-ball-bait-rig and was using a special bait that I had taken from the recipe in a book I wrote about shoreline fishing.

The bait at first was way too hard because I changed the recipe by adding more hardening ingredients to it to keep it from getting too soft from the heat. Normally, you would keep the bait cold on ice and use it that way, but, because we were camping, I knew I could not keep ice long enough to keep the bait cold, so I had to alter the recipe. Luckily, I was able to use water to make it soft enough to put it on the bead, and, to my delight, it worked well.

I was able to cast the dough ball bait out without a sinker, which is how I often like to fish when using dough baits. Well, that rod got rocked and the baitrunner sounded. BZZZZZZ….

To my horror, the fish came off immediately before I could lift the rod, which sometimes happens when you do not use a lead while using a baitrunner. A huge wake could be seen out in front of me, and I knew it had to have been a big fish, possibly a carp. Way to go Paul!

I could hear my invisible teammate shouting at me. Losing even one carp could cost you the tournament, so this was not a great way to start off. I decided I had to stand the rod up higher and turn off the baitrunner, so I got out my trusty spring-style rod holder and fished that rod the way I used to fish back in the days before my knowledge of European carp fishing tactics. With the bait back out in the same spot, it was time to wait and hope.

A few minutes passed, and a large fish seemed to swim back to the area where I had just cast out that dough ball. Then a large carp splashed out in front of me and several more carp were also seen splashing out in front of several other anglers all over the lake.

“It must be feeding time!” Someone yelled loudly across the lake from the other side.

Suddenly, the rod with the dough ball bent down in front of me.

“I got you now!” I thought.

Yep, I had a big fish tugging on the other end. Mike saw me struggling with a fish and yelled over to ask if I wanted him to put on his waders and get the net.

I yelled back, “YES! Please!”

Moments later the fish seemed to stop fighting hard, and I was just pulling it in like a log, so I wondered if it had gotten off and I was hauling in a snag. Mike was out in front of me with the net and soon the fish surfaced.

“Wow! It is a big fish!” shouted Mike.

The carp was tangled heavily into the line, but you could clearly see the hook was in its mouth. Mike netted the big carp and walked up to the shoreline where I helped him move the net to my unhooking cradle.

Mike used his net to land the carp, and it had the typical carp netting with small holes. My net is knotless but was made for Blue Catfish tournaments where knotless nets are also required, but the holes in the netting are way larger.

I like this kind of netting because it does not catch the current when I fish rivers, and the carp do not get their fins, especially that spiny top fin, stuck in the netting. Unfortunately, the smaller size holes allowed for my bead on my rig to get snagged up and the carp pulled the hook out of its mouth while it was thrashing.

As I grabbed the rig and attempted to free it from the netting to get it out of the way, the fish suddenly rolled, and the hook was immediately pulled deep into my pointer finger on my right hand.

“Yowwww!!!!!!!!” I screamed!

That hurt! The hook was now buried into my finger. Soon the weighing crew showed up, and I explained to them what had happened.

Steven Pflugradt, the director of the tournament, was with the weighing crew and he weighed the carp himself.

It tipped the scales at 26 Lbs. and 14 oz. and was the first carp landed in the tournament. It was also the largest carp ever caught at this lake to the knowledge of the KCCA. Isaac then held my fish for me for the photo because I could not, due to the hook in my finger.

Now what to do about this hook in my finger?

Well, before the weighing crew could leave, another one of my rods, which I was using to fish on the bottom with the method feeder, got a run.

BZZZZZZZZ….

“Oh great, how do I do this!” I said out loud.

I grabbed the rod and tried to keep the bead hanging from my finger from catching into the reel spool as it was turning. I could tell right away it was another nice size fish, but not as big as the one I had just landed. But it got snagged onto something, and I could not get it free.

“Way to go Paul!” “What a rookie!” I thought. The crew was soon back over with all kinds of disinfectants to help with the problem of a hook buried deep in my finger.

Luckily for me, Mike was a doctor. He said that normally he removed hooks like this one by pushing the barb back through the skin and cutting it off. However, that was not looking like it would be the path to take to get rid of this hook considering we had nothing to numb my finger with, and the cutters might not get the job done. So, Mike got me to turn away and popped the hook out. Luckily, I was using a micro-barbed hook, else this would have been even worse according to Mike.

Then we dumped every disinfectant on the wound available and covered it up. Yep, that is how you get a hook out in the middle of nowhere while fishing a tournament, good thing nobody panicked.

After I lost the second fish to the snag, my activity died down. However, Isaac had fallen asleep in his chair, and when I walked over to see if he was awake, I noticed his pod was knocked over.

“Isaac wake up, you might have a fish, buddy,” I said loudly.

Isaac woke up and was almost in a state of panic as he grabbed the rod that had been pulled partially into the lake and was luckily caught on some weeds on the shoreline. He then set into a carp and started to fight it.

Unfortunately, it had gone around that overhanging tree and was snagged up near the bank. The fish surfaced and before we could get the net over to it, the carp popped off. However, Isaac did not have a chance to think about losing that carp because one of his other rods took off and he was immediately into another fish. Moments later, I netted Isaac’s first carp of the tournament, which weighed in at 16 Lbs. 6 oz. After that fish, nobody on our side of the lake got any more good runs nor caught any fish the rest of the night.

Even though we did not catch anything that first night, I did not get much sleep. My alarms kept sounding, and at one point I got up and decided to watch my rods. Some kind of fish would grab the bait and make a short run then would let go.

I never did hook any of these fish, so I never found out what kind of fish was hitting so softly. My guess was it was Buffalo Suckers, small Channel Catfish, or very small carp. On the other side of the lake, I heard some screamer runs, but by morning it was clear nobody had taken the lead away from me and most of the fish landed had been catfish. Because I was far from the leaderboard, and I never ventured to the other side of the lake, I had no idea what had been caught and by whom until the end of the tournament. All I knew in the morning of the next day was that I still had the lead according to the weighing crew who occasionally walked by to check up on us.

A few carp crashed on the surface during the morning and someone had a run across the lake from us along that wind-swept bank, but nobody seemed to be catching much of anything other than someone had reported catching numerous Channel Catfish. The afternoon was very warm, but it was welcoming to me because I hate being cold. I realized it was about 2:00 in the afternoon, and I decided to move my third rod around.

I often use one rod as a searcher tossing out baits to different areas in hopes of finding some active fish. The carp also started to flop out in front of me and moments later my baitrunner sounded.

BZZZZZZ….

I grabbed the rod and made contact with another nice fish. Mike and Isaac had gone over to visit with the others on the other side of the lake, and I was left alone to land this one. After a good fight, I pulled the fish into the shoreline and managed to net it.

Soon the weighing crew, Mike, and Isaac were back over to see my second carp landed. This one was a smaller size carp and only tipped the scales at 9 Lbs. 15 oz.

I thought after I caught this carp, I would be landing a mess of them, but no more bites came until it got dark. During the night, Mike caught a carp that weighed in at 12 Lbs. even,

Isaac landed one that was 12 Lbs. 2 oz., and I landed a funny looking carp that I nicknamed Lumpy Stumpy that tipped the scales at 10 Lbs. 10 oz.

The carp bite ended just as soon as it started, and the rest of the night was calm with very little activity for me or the guys fishing around me. However, there was some excitement at peg 10 that woke me up in the middle of the night. Cory Bohmann landed a carp that tipped the scales at 17 Lbs. 2 oz.

“Way to go Cory!” I said loudly.

I have known Cory and Chad Bettisch (Carpe Diem Illinois on Facebook) his teammate for some time now having fished in several Illinois events with them. Both are very talented high-level carp anglers who just like to have fun fishing for carp rather it be in a tournament or not.

It was now morning and the sun had just come up. The tournament was winding down and would be over soon. I was still in the lead, but no lead is ever safe as many tournaments are decided in the final minutes. I got another run, and I hooked into a carp.

I fought the fish and got it into the shoreline just out of reach of my net when the hook popped loose and the fish was lost.

“Oh…. No….” I yelped.

I felt my heart pounding in my chest and felt like I had lost the tournament.

I needed one more carp to reach the four carp limit and this would have been a nice fish to have landed to add to my total weight.

“Paul, get the net!” Yelled Isaac.

Isaac horsed in his third carp of the tournament and it was his largest fish caught at 17 Lbs. 10 oz.

Isaac was now one fish away from his fourth carp, and my lead had shrunk to about 1 pound. Now I was running the risk of losing the tournament because I had lost that carp.

Bzzzzzzzz….

My middle rod took off, and I knew it had to be a carp. I grabbed it and set into a nice fish with about 45 minutes to go in the tournament. Mike put on his waders and was getting ready to help net the fish when suddenly it was stuck, and it was not moving.

“No!!!!” I sighed.

Mike reached out as far as he could with the net to see if he could get the fish to pop loose from the snag, but it did not work. Mike then came back to the shore so he could get back to his rods. Steven Pflugradt was talking with Isaac and was close by when suddenly my snagged carp suddenly was free.

The fish had its head down in the weeds and finally had given up the position and made its way to the surface. Suddenly, the fight was back on, and I knew I had to get this fish in close, or I risked losing it.

“Hey guys, can you help me with the net,” I yelled out.

Mike soon was out in front of me with his net and moments later he netted the fish, but he was blocking the view of it from me with his body.

“Sorry, it is a big catfish,” said Mike.

“Well, maybe I can win the net prize then, it must be huge to have put up that kind of fight,” I yelled back.

Then Mike brought the fish to the shoreline, and it was a carp.

I laughed, “You had me, man!” “I really, thought it was a catfish.”

We hoisted the fish up the bank and put it into the unhooking cradle. Steven Pflugradt was right there ready to weigh the fish.

It was not as big as it seemed considering it had given me the best fight of any of the fish that I landed, but it was still a very important fish to me.

I was the first angler to catch a carp, first to two carp, first to three carp, and the only one to reach the big four mark. The carp tipped the scales at 12 Lbs. 12 oz.

And the winners are…drum roll please… three solo-angler teams take home the glory. Fishing from the JACK peg, landing a 20 Lbs. 1 oz. carp giving him enough total weight to claim third place was Aniq Sajjad from Minnesota.

Aniq won the 2019 Austin Team Championship fishing with teammate Jaffar Syed and is a highlevel carp angler. Fishing from Peg 7 landing a total of three carp was second place finisher Isaac Rojas with a total weight of 46 Lbs. 2 oz., a local angler.

And your winner is Paul Scott (hey, that is me) who was fishing at Peg 8 and finished with four carp landed totaling 60 Lbs. 3 oz. of weight.

I also landed the largest carp of the tournament good for that side pot prize of just over $200 with a Common Carp that weighed in at 26 Lbs. 14 oz.

The team at the Queen peg (Dave Marceau and Brent Hammond) landed a 4 Lbs. 11 oz. Channel Catfish to win the biggest catfish prize: a new carp net.

Dave Marceau and Brent Hammond caught a lot of catfish during the tournament and lost a least one carp too. They finished the tournament with one carp landed that weighed 17 Lbs. 5 oz. and landed the largest catfish of the tournament to win the net.

I have fished many carp tournaments against Dave and can tell you he is one gifted carp angler. The last event I fished against Dave was in Illinois and, in that tournament, he landed a Common Carp that was nearly 20 pounds and won the big fish prize of more than $200.

The leaders’ board shows all the teams who caught carp.

It was a tough tournament with teams having very few chances to catch carp. Runs were often far between and if you missed bites or lost any fish, then it cost you dearly. The bottom is full of thick weeds and some snags, so it was not easy to land any of these fish for anyone.

Most of the teams who did not catch fish reported losing one or two carp to snags and weeds. Although it was difficult to get bites and land the carp, it also allowed any team to have a chance to win the tournament.

Yes, it was a tough tournament, but certainly one that was fun to fish with lots of exciting moments, including that battle between Isaac and me right at the end.

I would like to give a special thanks to Mariah Woods and Megan Pflugradt who picked up a pizza for my day 1 dinner. A huge thank you to Dr. Mike Bold (Peg 9) who got that hook out of my finger and netted two of my fish.

Thank you to all the KCCA members who weighed our fish and hosted this tournament: Kenny Pflugradt, Eris Pflugradt, Kevin Zirjacks, Loren Walters, Jason Angel, Colin Gerringer, Mariah Woods, Megan Pflugradt, and Steve Pflugradt (The Organizer and President of the KCCA).

Also thank you to the wonderful city of Lawson, Missouri, that allowed us to have this tournament on their beautiful city lake.

And thank you to all the professional carp anglers who competed in this tournament with me. God bless everyone and let us hope we get to compete in many more tournaments for many more years together. You can also watch my video summary of this tournament on YouTube at https://youtu.be/thfybu98ChI under Paul Scott or find it on my Facebook page under the name Paul ZuccaScott.

Also, check out this YouTube video : https://youtu.be/ iBeKfrk9AR8 put up by YouTuber Carp Angler “Shtarker Fishing” (Shtarker GarBones) whose team fished from the KING peg and included teammate Max Boltman Jr.

And a final note to all who missed this tournament, you will have another chance to fish it in 2023. Steve Pflugradt plans to host another KCCA Harvest Moon Classic Team Carp Tournament in Lawson, Missouri with an entry fee of $300 and a grand prize of $1500 going to the winning team.

“Fish…On!”

Paul Scott