Cortiana’s AOY Season

How the first-year competitor blazed through the Costa FLW Series Southwestern Division

Winning any angler-of-the-year title requires that a lot of things go right. This year in the Costa FLW Series Southwestern Division, Kyle Cortiana of Broken Arrow, Okla., made it look easy. In his first year fishing at the FLW Series level Cortiana booked a top 10 at Sam Rayburn, which he’d never seen before, finished second at home on Fort Gibson, and made a check on Grand Lake. As a result, he qualified for the Walmart FLW Tour and beat out such luminaries at Zack Birge, Jeff Sprague and Chris McCall for the AOY title.

The right time

Just looking at the numbers on FLWfishing.com, you might think that Cortiana found success a little too quickly. In actuality, he’s had a long road to the level he’s at now. For years, he’s picked away at the occasional FLW Bass Fishing League (BFL) and ABA event, and done a lot of fishing with his dad, Carl Cortiana. In 2016, things came together for a run at more solo fishing.

“Money was the main reason that kept me from doing it until now,” says Kyle, who works as a civil engineer. “I’ve fished since I was a little boy with my dad, and I just never had the money to compete at that level. I’d just pick and mingle at BFLs and ABA events, and that was because of my father too. I love fishing with my dad, and he loves fishing with me. I can’t fish any of that stuff with him [as a team], and he doesn’t like fishing as a co-angler, so I fished a lot of little club things that we could fish together.”

In his first run at Triple-A fishing, the Oklahoman more than held his own.

“My goal was just to see how I fared. It was a test for myself,” says Kyle. “My ultimate goal was to make the top 10, and then make the decision on the Tour after that.”

The 2016 season

Cortiana totaled up 714 AOY points and beat Zack Birge out for the title by 18 points.

Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Feb. 25-27

At Rayburn, Cortiana sacked up 19 pounds on day one and trailed off for a total of 48-14 and 10th place.

Never having been on Sam Rayburn before, the whole thing was a new experience for him.

“I was punching all week, and I’ve never punched before,” Cortiana says. “In Oklahoma, we don’t have grass, and you can’t punch anything but people in a bar.

“I didn’t know how to do it, and apparently I was doing it wrong. Every day, I was getting 40 to 60 bites, but I didn’t know how to pull them out of that grass. They’re smarter than I am.”

Cortiana says that at one point on the first day, he had to watch as a 7-pounder came unbuttoned and flopped its way across the matted hay grass until it could get back in the lake. Besides learning that he loved and hated flipping grass, he got some confidence in another technique.

“I also incorporated a swim jig with a big custom-made swimbait from Gene Larew,” says Cortiana. “I caught a few giants on it. That was a key thing, to get comfortable with that really giant bait. You can’t throw baits like that in Oklahoma, but sometimes you need to fish for that caliber of fish.”

Grand Lake, April 7-9

Fishing a lot closer to home for the second stop of the FLW Series, Cortiana finished 27th with 27-14 at Grand Lake.

“I thought I could win Grand,” says the Oklahoma pro. “I was getting 40 to 50 bites a day on Grand in practice, and I literally quit fishing before it [practice] was over.

“It was what a lot of the guys were doing,” says Cortiana. “I was fishing really slow, fishing a jig.”

Unfortunately, that practice success didn’t quite carry into the tournament. Though the bite was pretty grueling throughout, some more lost fish and fewer bites than practice combined to put Cortiana in the money but out of the cut.

“I want redemption at Grand Lake,” says Cortiana, when looking ahead to the 2017 schedule. “Pending Oklahoma’s ridiculous weather, that one will be at about the same time. That time of year, there ought to be a lot of bags over 20 pounds.”

Fort Gibson Lake, Sept. 29–Oct. 1

For Fort Gibson, Cortiana fished his way to a second-place finish with 43-4. Second also earned him $13,004, his biggest paycheck of the season.

“I’ve been fishing that lake for a long time. I used to run jackpot tournaments there, so I know it really well,” says Cortiana. “But during the fall it always gets tough when those fish start moving.”

After an extensive practice with his dad in the boat, Cortiana arrived on two patterns. The first was to simply grind it out in a few community holes by fishing very slowly with a Gene Larew Tattletail Worm and a Chompers Brush Jig with a Gene Larew Punch Out Craw, which provided plenty of keepers. The second was based around the current flow over shallow mud flats by the Grand River – an oddball pattern that he saved until the second day.

“In practice I had found something really special,” says Cortiana. “It was a really large flat of mud that I’d ignored my entire life. I idled back into it because I saw a bird back there and thought it might be sitting on a log or something. I got up there, and the bird was on a big giant log, and I cast a Biffle Bug up past it and caught a 5-pounder. So we spent the next four hours idling around looking for birds, and every one of them [laydowns] had a big one on it.”

In the tournament, that extra pattern didn’t entirely play out. After losing fish at the first three trees he tried on day two, he settled down and caught fish on the rest of his spots to cull up past 16 pounds. On the final day, with no current, that pattern didn’t play out at all, and Cortiana scrambled together nearly 15 pounds elsewhere.

The next step

With a great season under his belt, Cortiana has his sights set even higher in 2017.

While having a good job and some money saved to fish was a critical factor in his decision to fish the FLW Series this year, fishing the Walmart FLW Tour in 2017 was a big personal decision.

“My wife and I, we’ve been trying to have kids for quite a while now, and the Lord hasn’t blessed us with one yet,” says Cortiana. “So we chose to take that as a sign that I should go out fishing and not have that extra responsibility. It’s really cool to have a wife that supports you like that, and to turn around and win Angler of the Year and have your wife tell you that is pretty special.

“I have always been goo goo ga ga for those guys you watch on the weekend – for the whole concept of fishing and making money doing something you love to do. There are not many that get to do something that’s so fun and make a living at it. It’s been a pipe dream my whole life, but still a dream that is somewhat possible. When you see local guys like Zack Birge and Jason Christie do it, it makes you think that if they can do it why not me.”

Next up for Cortiana is the Costa FLW Series Championship this November on Table Rock (which Zack Birge won in 2014 on Wheeler Lake). Then the Oklahoman will head out on Tour for 2017. There, the best competition he’s ever seen and a whole slew of new lakes will be ready to challenge him.