“What’s a Kickerfish?” is a question I get asked all too often. Surprisingly even from seasoned tournament anglers. More than just a cool brand name, the term kickerfish is routinely heard in the realm of competitive fishing.
The ever elusive kickerfish can mean all the difference between finishing out of the money to winning the tournament. The term loosely refers to any above-average sized fish that helps to comprise an individual angler’s or team’s bag limit for weigh-in. In essence, your biggest fish in the livewell or scorecard that day. In a sport where literally every ounce counts, the boost that a big ‘kicker’ can give you on the leaderboard is what separates the top anglers from the rest of the field.
Why not just try for all ‘kickers’ you ask? If it were only that easy. I’m sure every tournament angler that has ever competed has fantasized about a perfect competition where every fish they brought topside was a giant. Depending on a fishery’s regulations or a competition’s format, it is certainly possible and does happen around here. More often however, anglers aim to catch limits of solid fish and work hard to hopefully hook into a kicker or two to put them over the top.
Quite often a kickerfish is defined by a specific measurement. In competitions where there’s a slot size regulation to adhere to, a kickerfish is simply the one or two large oversize fish you are permitted to score. Generally speaking, however, walleye are considered big kickers at 28 inches and smallmouth bass when they surpass 4 pounds. The growing popularity of channel catfish competitions has also established that good kickers of that species start at 37 inches in length.
Most of our regional tournaments for any species have some version of a ’Big Fish’ category. If you check out past results, it is always interesting to see what size fish win these awards. The info can be useful for game-planning or practicing on the same bodies of water or just for kicks to compare your catches when recreational angling. For those not too familiar with weights compared to length there are rough estimate converters or formulas out there online including our own Length to Weight conversion chart that we use in our competitions.