By Vance McCullough – AC InsiderMy dad taught me young, “There are dreamers. And then there are doers. Be a doer.”

Then you meet a guy like Drew Gregory. A doer of dreams. Big dreams. Winner of too many bass tournaments to enumerate here, including the 2024 Bassmaster Kayak Series championship held concurrently with the Bassmaster Classic in Oklahoma.

Gregory works his magic from  the cockpit of his Shoalie, a kayak he designed for Crescent Kayaks.

Most recently Gregory started 2025 with a bang, winning the national Bassmaster Kayak Series tournament on Lake Havasu, AZ, a long haul from his home in Ohio.

A minimalist by nature, Gregory paddled his Shoalie, sans electronics, “as far as we were allowed to fish up the river. There were no obvious bends, no cover, no wood or grass, just a little riprap for the fish to warm themselves on. This eliminated most of the angling crowd.”

Gregory’s winning tactic is often referred to as fishing ‘ugly water’, that is, water that most would overlook. But there was nothing ugly about the beautiful conditions Havasu offered, though the fishing was tough. “I could see 25 feet down so when I stood, I could see the smallmouth. There weren’t many, but I found a group of 15 or 20 bunched up where the riprap gave way to the bare sand bottom, 3-to-5-feet below. I worked that group for most of my limit both days.”

He used the new Z-man ‘Gobius’, basically a finesse swimbait which he fished on 8lb braided line in the gin clear water. “The fish were pecking at the line where it entered the water the way bluegill often do. I would speed the bait up to get it front of them and they would bite.”

After twice losing his limit fish in the final round, Gregory felt his chance of victory slipping away. “Then I went to an area where they were doing some dredging so the water had a stain to it. That color in the water was enough to raise the temperature maybe just a degree or so. I soaked a Crosseyez jig on 30lb braid and caught a 14-inch largemouth with 20 minutes left to fish. He was my smallest fish of the tournament, but he was the biggest catch. That one sealed the win.”

Gregory will fish the next Bassmaster Kayak Series event on Florida’s Kissimmee Chain as we flip the calendar to February.

Then he will kick off the Kayak Adventure Series season with the ‘Ocalapalooza’ – a tournament whose playing field encompasses most lakes, rivers and puddles within an hour of Ocala, FL. That’s a lot of water. And Gregory expects a big field of participants in the tournament trail of his own creation.

I did say the man was a big dreamer, right?

Ocalapalooza will take place February 21^st and 22^nd. For those keeping score at home, that’s a Friday and Saturday – a break from the traditional Saturday/Sunday schedule of most national series. This gives anglers a travel day back home that doesn’t eat into any more vacation time, a nice wrinkle born from the mind of a man who actually fishes tournaments and understands the needs of anglers.

Gregory has built a bunch of flexibility into the Kayak Adventure Series. Each event features a pre-tournament meeting Thursday afternoon followed by seminars and networking opportunities Friday morning. The first round of competition begins Friday afternoon and the fishing concludes with an entire day of tournament angling on Saturday. Over the day-and-a-half, contestants are still only posting their 5 best bass. This arrangement encourages exploration, given the extra half day on Friday.

Also, anglers are allowed to portage over obstacles, even wade through whitewater riffles in some events, and roam far upstream, away from the motorboat crowd – which is why many of us took to kayaks in the first place although other national trails have recently enacted rules that keep anglers bound to big waters where many use the latest electronics and compete with the bass boat crowd. You can do that too on the KAS but their tagline ‘find your own adventure’ is more than a slogan, it’s the way we actually do things on this fun, competitive trail dreamed up by a guy who’s won everything you can from a kayak.

One piece of electronic equipment Gregory does embrace is the camera. He has the coolest social media pics and vids. He wants the rest of us to follow suit. To that end, he has enlisted GoPro to pay huge contingency bonuses, as much as $10,000 to winners who video-record their biggest two bass catches!

Not only does this help us share the winning moments, but the camera offers an iron-clad guarantee that everything was done in a legal manner. This is often missing in our sport where we generally self-police our activities.

“It’s getting to the point,” notes Gregory, “with the big bonus money offered by GoPro, if somebody doesn’t want to film themselves it sort of raises eyebrows. The cameras are affordable and portable. Why would you not want to double or triple your payday?”

I’ll be fishing the Bassmaster tourney and the Kayak Adventure Series in my home state this February. Come on down and get your feet wet where it’s warm enough to do so!

Got to KayakAdventureSeries.com for info or to register, go tot TourneyX.com or the Tourney X app.

For information on the Bassmaster Kayak Series check Bassmaster.com and register for their events Tourney X as well.

And as always, to find upcoming tournaments you can follow or even fish in, check out the Anglers Channel Tournaments tab.