Hook & Spoke

Just a quick update on the kayak cart:

After messing around a bit with the ideas from the last kayak cart post I was never satisfied. It either didn’t work well as was the case with the double wheels; or it was too finicky (the homemade inflatables). I had largely put the project off to the side when the old man came home with a great score: the wheels off an old Power Wheels.

The wheels are nothing special. They are somewhere between 8-10” in diameter and about 6-7” wide. In fact when I compare them to newer models they don’t even look as nice or as big. Nonetheless, with some Yankee ingenuity we had them attached to our carts fairly quickly and they rolled. On a side note, it just so happens that the scupper spacing on my old boat was identical to the spacing on my new Hobie and only some very minor tweaking was needed to reuse the cart in the new boat.

I’d say I’m still in the testing stage but so far it has been pretty successful. I’ve never used the real deal wheel-eez so I really can’t compare these wheels to them. If I had to hazard a guess I’m sure my home brews pale in comparison to them. I can , however, make the following observations:

1. They are lighter than the old Hazard Fraught wheels I was using before.

2. They absolutely float over sand better. My old wheels really dug in, these new wheels still require a decent pulling effort but it is works better.

3. The hard plastic is loud on pavement-think any Fisher-Price cart or cooler with plastic wheels.

All in all I’d say these wheels are probably the best I’m going to get until I can find some sort of cheaper but effective pneumatic wheel. I’ll never be able to compete with full squish tires but these are a nice alternative for the moment. After all, I would say that 75% I don’t even need the cart.

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One last thing, I finally got a handheld marine radio. I should’ve bought one years ago. It is crucial for the obvious safety reasons but it is also great being able to talk with whoever else I may be out with as well as listen to boat chatter from the area. The Standard Horizon HX40 model I bought will also do NOAA weather radio and FM radio. I love it so far and enjoy the noise when I’m on the water even if it is only some low volume FM tunes. I find myself turning it on in my truck as soon as I get near the water, even on my commutes to work. I love hearing the canal patrol yell at boats. Over and out.

For those that follow my Instagram account this is no secret. For anyone that doesn’t, I have finally done it. I bought a pedal kayak, specifically a 2019 Hobie Revo 13. After searching around craigslist and FB Marketplace for a deal, I found a boat that checked my boxes out in Amsterdam NY. It was a floor model from last year at the Adirondack Kayak Warehouse. I spoke with the owner Joe Giardino and found out he actually had two of them; an interesting development. The Old Man has expressed some mild interest in joining me in my quest for a new boat and here was a chance to get a great deal on two boats that were brand new. It didn’t take much convincing and a few hours later we were driving over three hours to a small NY city north of Schenectady.

Joe and his son welcomed us at their showroom on a Sunday evening, after hours, and were more than accommodating. The boats looked beautiful and, to be honest, bit overwhelming. There is just so much more going on than in our old paddle boats. The boys at the shop were more than willing to answer any questions we had and before we knew it we were loaded up and heading home having just made one of the more expensive purchases in my life.

I have owned the boat now for one week. In that time I’ve had it on the water three times. I don’t even have rod holders on it yet, save the two molded in the hull behind the seat. I have experienced enough however to have some strong first impressions. I’m not going to get heavily into the specs of the boat as that information can be found all over the internet but I will explore what I like about it and some of its quirks.

1. I love pedaling. That’s not to say that I dislike paddling but for a fishing platform pedaling just can’t be beat. I have talked in the past about the gate keeping that happens in this sport. There are many who would have you think that a paddle kayak is unacceptable for a fishing platform. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I, and many that I fish with use or used paddle boats for years with great success. That being said, having gone to a pedal kayak I have seen the light. Because you can move and fish at the same time it opens up many locations for fishing that would be impossible if you were paddling. Already I have used it to to fight wind and strong current to achieve a slow drift across Black Sea bass grounds in Buzzards Bay and fight the fierce rips created by the western mouth of the Cape Cod Canal while being able to effectively and productively fish it.

2. This boat is fast. It really cuts through the water. Even paddling, which I anticipate I will do on occasion, is efficient. The hull is also light and fairly easy to maneuver on dry land thanks to the bow and stern handles as well as two very nice midship gunwale handles. The empty hull weighs about the same, if not slightly less than my old boat.

3. It is comfortable. The Vantage seat is very comfortable, much more so than my old molded seat. Keeping my butt up off the hull is so nice. In calm water, I’m dry. In my old boat I was wet no matter the conditions.

4. It is a wet ride. I was surprised at how wet it is. The bow of the boat is shaped so as to slice through the water however there is no flair at the top. This causes the bow to pierce through chop which then washes over the bow. The flat sides near the bow also seem to cause a decent amount of splash-over from cross waves. The dry butt I referenced above is nonexistent in choppier conditions. Water taken over the sides likes to collect in the seat well and soak my bottom. It is still far better than sitting on a soaked pad against the hull but I was anticipating a drier ride. The one disclaimer to this: there is a drain in the seat well. It theoretically works via the Venturi principal and sucks water out when the plug is lifted. I’m not sure why this method was chosen over standard scupper holes. It could be my weight as I am not a light man, but my drain does not seem to be very effective even when left open. I’m certainly not discounting user error and will continue to play with this to see if I can improve its performance. My initial impression is that that it is both over, and under, engineered.

5. Space is at a premium. When compared to a paddle kayak that has a lot of real estate in the cockpit, the revo can seem a bit cramped. It is a machine meant for the minimalist fisher. If you look at an Outback, there is so much space on the sides to make up for the lack of space up front. This front space is of course occupied by the Mirage Drive. The Revo doesn’t have these side storage areas. Instead it is narrow, sleek and fast. I don’t mind this, I generally try to make my packing and rigging as efficient as possible. But, it will take some getting used to.

Obvious no boat is perfect. Sacrifices in one area will always be necessary to accommodate features in another area. So far though I am in love with this boat. I cannot wait for my gear tracks to arrive I’m the mail so I can finish my rigging. Once I get the boat dialed I will really have a full appreciation for it. I am also still engineering my crate/bucket in the rear. I was never fully satisfied with my old bucket system and I hope I can make this one more efficient.

I hope this post was coherent as I’m running on about 6 hours of sleep for the weekend, I couldn’t stop fishing out of this new machine. Below are a few pictures of fish taken over the weekend.

Saturday morning was spent chasing schoolies around Buzzards Bay in my kayak. The early morning was calm and the water mirror-like. My usual spots had been producing well recently and I was optimistic that it would be a good morning. Trolling my fly and a small paddle tail jig produced only two micro schoolies; not the production rate I was expecting. Reports from other anglers on shore and other boats did nothing to raise my hopes. I decided to leave the small bay and head out to larger water.

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Leaving the bay only accomplished one thing for me. It gave me the chance to notice just how much the wind picked up. I hadn’t noticed since I was heading in the same direction as the northwest wind. Once I was out in the bigger water and trying to fish it became very evident that a) it was going to be near impossible to do anything but troll around and fight the wind and current and; b) the paddle back was going to suck. With these realizations in mind, my old man and I decided to turn back and make our way towards the launch, fishing as we go. The return trip provided my father with his nicest fish of the morning at about 24”. I picked up some nicer fish in the 20-22 inch class as we got further back in the bay to close out the morning. Discussion over some post fish beers on the patio revolved around where some larger fish might be residing. With the current restrictions in place, Rhode Island was out of the question. A friend has been trying to convince us to check out the Taunton River down in Fall River for a while now. The weather and tide forecasted for today, Sunday, both looked promising and the plan was solidified.

Meeting at the Bicentennial Park launch at 5:30 am, once again we were confronted by glassy water. My father and I launched and left our friend Bruce to catch up with us shortly. We were immediately out of our normal element. Within a few hundred yards of the ramp and we were in 40 ft of water. Combined with the urban surroundings, we were definitely not on the Cape anymore.

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What seemed like promising conditions gave us false hope of a morning spent chasing pods if breaking fish. Instead we searched, and searched, and searched for any signs of life, only to find nothing. We made our way upstream, trolling and blind casting. I spent a while jigging the bottom but I was blind. Since my own kayak has developed some cracks, I have been using a loaner boat and don’t have my depth finder hooked up.

Our efforts proved fruitless. The morning seemed like it was going to be a wash. None of us had so much as a sniff. As we paddled under a couple bridges though, we saw the shining beacon of hope. Guys both on shore and in boats were catching tautogs hand over fist. We pulled up on shore to take a break and come up with plan.

My plan was to fish for tog. I’ve been dying to catch one and since the stripes weren’t showing this seemed like a way to save the morning. 10 minutes of flipping rocks on the beach provided a half decent supply of green crabs. They were small but I had nothing to lose. I scrounged up a jig head that seemed like it would work and paddled over to the bridge abutment. With my limited jigging abilities I dropped my bait down and kept it about a foot off the bottom. Again, no depth finder so I don’t know what depth we were working in but if I had to guess I would say about 20-30 ft. Without. 5 minutes I had pulled my first short tog onto the boat.

10 minutes later and the old man had a keeper in the boat. I followed suite and quickly brought my own keeper in. Suddenly the day was looking up. We quickly went to shore and restocked our crab supply now that our method seemed sound. Another hour was spent afterwards jigging. We only pulled up another keeper each but plenty of shorts were brought to the boats.

At this point, the crabs were gone again, the tide was turning and the wind was picking up. Bruce had pedaled his way about another mile up river and had actually found a handful of schoolies in the mid 20” class. Knowing if we paddled our way up there it would be a long haul back into the wind, the old man and I decided to call it and head towards the ramp with Bruce following shortly.

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The morning wasn’t what I expected. I certainly wasn’t expecting to come home with my first tautogs if my life but I did. It turned out to be a great morning and I’m about to eat some of the tog for dinner tonight.

It’s almost mid May in 2020. It was 32 degrees in Buzzards Bay last night. Include the wind chill factor and it felt more like 24 degrees. I woke up at 3 am, confirmed the temps on a few weather apps, decided it wasn’t worth it and promptly fell back asleep. I know this seems like quitter talk, I wussed out. What kind of New England surf fisherman let’s a bit of foul weather stop him? Well, this one.
Sure, I felt like a bit of a quitter; some of my favorite surf fishing stories involve facing brutal elements thrown by Mother Nature. But it is still technically early may, and despite an early start to the striper migration, the fishing has actually been fairly slow, at least for me. Add to the equation the theory that the fish would lay down due to the extreme cold front and it all adds up to a Sunday morning spent sleeping in.

After leisurely waking up around 7am, which might as well be noon for fishermen, I spent the day searching google maps for new spots, studying tide charts and going through my gear. Like all fisherman these days, especially us shore bound and kayak fisherman, we are really feeling the clampdown from the extreme COVID-19 regulations. Having beach and ramp parking lots closed off is really cramping the fishing options. What might be an even worse effect of these closures, compounded by the amount of people out of work, is that locations I usually have to myself often are crowded to the point that I don’t even bother throwing a line in. I’m no hermit, I don’t mind sharing my locations with other fishermen. I’ll fish the canal even when I have to squeeze my way in. Many of the spring schoolie hot spots barely support 5-6 guys though. When you show up and there are 10, 15, sometimes even 20 people there it’s hard to fish peacefully, never mind maintain any sort of social distancing.
What really kills me is that normally I would just switch to my kayak. the last couple years I have made more of a concerted effort to spend more time in my plastic boat. The last 3-4 weeks however have been comprised mostly of windy, cold, rainy days. Warmer days are accompanied by 15-25mph winds and the calm days seen like they barely hit 50 degrees. I don’t mind the cold, but I don’t have a dry suit and while I will occasionally wear my waders in my boat, I’m not sure it’a the safest idea and it certainly isn’t comfortable.

Long story short: COVID sucks and my spring fishing season has been frustrating.

Now that I have gotten all that complaining out of my system,  let’s concentrate on the good things.

1. I picked up a new canal rod back in March. I took advantage of the annual spring sale at Redtop Sporting Goods in Buzzards Bay and got myself a Lamiglas Carbon Surf 3-8oz canal special. I’ve only had it out a couple times but so far I love it.

2. My trusty Penn 706Z has made its way back from Beavertail Rod and Reel. Dave Morton modified the reel to accept a modern 1-way clutch bearing. This gives the reel infinite anti-reverse, with or without the clicker.

3. I just upgraded my canal bike with the standard Wald grocery baskets. For years I’ve attached my rod holders to my old Blackburn rear rack and used a modified cat litter bucket to hold my gear. The wire basket is a huge improvement, despite added quite a bit of weight to the bike.

4. Despite a frustrating spring so far, I did pick up my first, fresh, migratory fish before May. It has been slow since, but damn that felt good.

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It has been a crazy summer of fishing. It has also been a very lax summer of writing. If I wasn’t fishing, I was tending to my husbandly duties or sleeping and I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and write. I have some good stories coming up and some good pictures. Despite getting my two handed rod set up, I largely abandoned fly fishing the salt for much of the summer. Instead I picked up my surf rod, outfitted my bike, and hit the canal where guys were catching monsters. For anyone that follows my Instagram, this may be of no surprise. Wednesday nights were still on the fly but honestly there wasn’t much excitement there. The real moments came early in the day, the pre-dawn, pre-work outings in the canal when I’d catch so many fish I could barely move my arms. Stay tuned. For now, I’ll leave a few pictures.

 

 

**Disclosure: I actually wrote this post last week and apparently never put it up. Oh well, here it is anyway**

I can’t believe it is already August. It feels like only last week I was just getting the season rolling, catching those ambitious schoolies leading the pack up the coast. Maybe it’s because July was a bit a of slow month. I was working so hard to catch such few, and small fish. It led to trying some new things though, like the jigging for sea bass and fluke. I’ve also been trying to get on the canal bite that has been pure fire the last few weeks. So far I have not been successful, unless your vision of success is losing a lot of gear, nearly breaking your rod, banging up your nearly new reel, and dislocating a finger. Up until that last part, it was still pretty fun. Finally, on top of it all, despite fishing quite a bit I have been woefully negligent in regards to documenting my trips via photograph.

Today was a good day. I got down to the beach at 4:15am to get a few hours of fishing in before work. Thinking my coworker would be joining me, I had brought my bike and surf rod to fish the canal more. After arriving, waiting, and finally shooting off a few text messages without response I realized I would be alone. I decided to hit the beach and get some more practice in with my new rod, an 8wt TFO Deer Creek switch. A friend has graciously loaned me a skagit head to try out and I have been using the rod every chance I get. All I will say for now is that A) I love the rod and B) I suck at proper two-handed casting techniques. Once I get my own line and complete the outfit I will do a full write up.

The action was slow, but that can be expected on a beach. Often you are waiting for schools to swim through, on the hunt for any baitfish that may be around. You just have to have your fly in the water when they swim by. I almost immediately picked up a small fish. I then spent the next 30 minutes getting harassed by and occasionally catching some shad.

After that, the sun came up and the bite died. I went about an hour without so much as a tug. I made my way down the beach, casting as I walked. A few fishermen that I know showed up and immediately started catching. I watched them jealously for a few minutes and saw that they suffered the same fate I had. Their bite turned off and now they too were walking the beach, searching. By now the sun was in the sky and the morning was warming.

I had been running into a fellow named Roland  every morning that week. We were on the same schedule it seemed, and this morning was no exception. He and his friend made their way down the beach and fished next to me for a while. He must have brought some good luck with him because suddenly the three of us hooked up at once. My fish took me right to my reel, and it gave my new rod its first workout. I had the fish in within a few minutes, and it turned out to be the nicest fish I’d picked up in a few weeks. I didn’t get a chance to measure, but it looked to be about 22″. I fumbled to get my camera out and snap a picture. I was trying to do something a little different. Rather than holding the fish up with one hand and the camera with the other, which always results in an awkward, scale-less photo with no context; I wanted to lay the fish across my stripping basket with my rod. It would give an idea of the scale of the fish and hopefully provide a more stimulating photograph. The fish though, he didn’t like the idea and I wasn’t able to contain him long enough to get the picture.  So instead of a crappy photo, I got nothing instead.

Regardless of my photo mishap, I was feeling good after that fish. I figured it was a good time to start making my way back to the car. Unfortunately that was my last fish of the day but I left on a high note as I begrudgingly went to work.

 

It took three years, but it finally happened. I took a swim off the kayak. I’ve taken the boat out to play with, with no gear, and tested its limits and gone in. That was intentional though. Outside of that, I’ve never lost it. My boat can handle some serious water and I’ve been caught out in three foot seas without issue. It’s not fun but I’ve survived easily. Cue Sunday morning. The Old Man and I launched at about 4:30am at a location about 500 yards upstream from a tidal river on Cape Cod.  We timed it to catch the end of the outgoing tide and it pulled us into a glass-calm bay. It was truly an eerie, surreal environment. There was absolutely no wind, a light fog and overcast skies. It call combined to create disorienting, purgatory-like atmosphere.

As we left the river and paddled through the rip created at the end, we saw the familiar faces of a few fellow fly fisherman. They were pulling the usual schoolies with a few shad mixed in. Par for the course at this particular river. We had our sites set on some bigger fish though. Earlier that morning we stopped at Maco’s and picked up a dozen sea worms. They’re vile creatures, but they play a crucial role in the popular “tube & worm” trolling method. We hadn’t rigged them up yet, but still we left the mouth to troll the shore a bit, taking advantage of the kayaks. I was trolling a white deceiver off my fly rod and a white bucktail with a white Otter Tail trailer. I doubled up on the white mainly out of laziness. I’ve been doing well with the deceiver and it was already rigged on my fly rod so I left it. The bucktail was also already rigged to my spin rod but when I tried changing it, I realized I left my plug box in my car. So until I rigged up my tube, a bucktail would have to do.

The conditions were deceiving. I thought we were in for some decent action but it really proved to be very slow. The Old Man picked up one dink as we trolled down the beach but I came up empty handed. We made our way back up to the channel opening and saw the other group had keyed into a good school of small bass. A couple guys were catching on almost every cast. We fished the rip with them for a few minutes, both of us picking up a couple fish. In general the fish were in tight though, and it was difficult to reach them with the kayaks without crowding out the folks on shore. We took it as a sign to get on with our mission.

We paddled away from the rip and left our fellow fly fishermen, careful to keep our plan under wraps. We felt like traitors. We rigged up our tubes and fought some worms onto the hooks. Not too far off shore lies a ledge. You can get a rough idea of where it is by looking for the field of lobster pots. It is a famous spot and trolling the tube and worm is a notorious striper killer there. Apparently the fish didn’t get the memo that we’d be there though. We trolled the area, carefully weaving our way through the pots, for over an hour with not so much as a hit. As the sun began to break through the cloud cover a slight breeze finally picked up. It was blowing from north west, and we continued to make our way west since it would blow us back to the river when we decided we’d had enough.

The weather decided that for us pretty quickly. Not twenty minutes after the first movement air came across the bay, a solid 15-20 knot wind had picked up and the water boiled up in anger. The calm bay suddenly had two and three foot swells as the temperature dropped and clouds came back over the sky, blanketing the sun. We weren’t worried, but fishing was difficult and we made our way back to the river. We both had pulled our tube rigs and the Old Man was done fishing all together. I was holding out hope, thinking maybe the sudden rough water would stir up some action. I put on a small epoxy sand eel and trolled my fly rod as I paddled. It seems the water did stir up some bait because suddenly birds started diving closer to shore. I trolled through a couple of times with no luck. By my third pass I had given up on the day. There didn’t seem to be any fish under the bait and the conditions were only worsening. Suddenly my rod bent in half and my drag was screaming. God Damn! This was the fish I had been waiting for. I thought I was in for a keeper, on a fly that I had never caught a fish on before too. He muscled up a good fight, took a few good runs and fooled me. I had gotten a look at him and saw that he was far from a keeper, but still not a bad fish. I got him to the boat and he looked to be 20-22″. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of him due to the conditions. I released him and threw my fly out again because I’m a glutton for punishment. I ended up picking up a shad shortly after.

By now we were back at the mouth of the river. The tide had turned, and the wind was actually pushing the tide back in rather quickly. The waves were now breaking over the shelf at the mouth of the river and this is where it all went wrong. The problem with the kayaks, and I assume the same can be said for all boats if scaled correctly, is that you lose all control when you paddle with the surf. You try to time your entry, aiming for the small breaks between the sets and then paddle your heart out. I watched as the Old Man tried taking the river entrance head on. It didn’t take long for a good breaker to come in, push him sideways and knock him off. I watched, still sitting outside of the breaking surf and watched him stand. Luckily he was in knee deep water. One down.

I decided to come in on the west side where it seemed a bit easier. I set off, tried paddling as fast as I could and thought I was actually going to make it. But I was wrong. A good size wave broke right over the back of me, swamping my entire boat. There wasn’t enough time for the water to drain out the scuppers before the next wave came in. I was a sitting duck. With the boat swamped I couldn’t move and the wave just kicked out my rear end. My buoyancy was trashed with all the water in the boat so instead of riding up and over the wave I went through it. It kicked me off. It’s disorienting at first, but I quickly got to my feet and tried holding onto the boat. That’s when I realized one of my biggest mistakes of the day. I hadn’t leashed my paddle to the boat, nor had I really prepared anything else. So as I stood up I had to decide what I was grabbing. Immediately in front of my was my kayak, paddle and my new coffee mug. I fumbled for them as I got pounded by the surf. The kayak was ripped from my hand, and with my two rods in their holders, sticking up in the air, it flipped. I managed to get to the boat quickly before it it was pounded too hard but I had visions of broken rod tips when I flipped it. I don’t know how but both rods came out unscathed.

All in all I ended up losing my anchor and a box of sinkers. I know enough people that frequent the area that it’s not out of the questions I get one or both back but I’m not holding out much hope.

That photo is really the only one I took that day. It doesn’t look like much but that is after I got the boat up on shore and rescued what I thought was everything that dumped out. We are on a sandbar jutting out with the river on the left and the breakers behind me. I think I learned some humility that morning. Like said early on, I’ve never come close to going over before so I went into this situation a bit too headstrong. It was a wild end to the morning. I can’t lie, there’s a sick part of me that enjoyed it. Sure it sucked losing my anchor that I just bought this year, but it was only a matter of time before I lost it anyway. As I type this now, all I can think of is getting back out there. I’m still after that big fish and I’m certainly not going to catch it sitting here in front of my computer. On a final note, I just bought a switch rod. I’m in the process of choosing a line and getting the rest of the outfit together but stay tuned for a write up on it.

Tight Lines!

 

 

It has been a little while since my last update. Work has been busy and I haven’t had much time to fish. What little time I have had, has not been successful. To be honest, I have been tiring of fighting to catch a handful of tiny schoolies on the fly rod. Earlier in the spring I might’ve been catching mostly small fish, but I’d have 30-50 fish days. Now I’m lucky if I catch five or six in a multi-hour outing. It has been frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong. Any time spent on the water is worthwhile. It would just be nice to hook into some decent fish. I’ve started to do crazy things. To squeak a few more fishing hours into the week I’ve started getting up and getting a couple hours in before work. That requires a 3am-4am wake up though, so it can be rough doing it more than once or twice a week. This week in particular, I’ve joined one of my coworkers on the canal with my spin rod and bike. Cruising the canal, searching for breaking fish and stopping to throw heavy lead jigs has actually been a nice reprieve. However I have already lost about $20 worth of tackle into the merciless ditch just in this week.

Above you can see my setup. I don’t have the storage space for a dedicated canal cruiser so I made a litter bucket pannier with some rod holders. It worked well but does require some refining. I think I am going to build a rod tube onto the other side of the rack that leans back at a 45degree angle rather than vertical as it is now. There are some over hanging branches on the canal service road and my rod was not happy about being slapped by them. Despite not even a tug on my line, it was a great morning. I hadn’t ridden the full length of the service road in years.

Later in the week I went back to the fly rod for the weekly Bear’s Den meetup. The wind was howling on an otherwise hot and muggy night and as much as I wanted to hit the open beaches, we were blown into the shelter provided upstream of an estuary.

The tide was already high when we arrived and over the next few hours, it continued to rise. By the time we left for the night, most of what you can see in the above photo was under water. It was a slow night with most, myself included, catching only a couple small fish. We were eventually driven out by the mosquitoes that did not care how much bug spray we had on. Had the fishing been better, I would’ve toughed it out but it wasn’t worth the punishment those little blood suckers bring.

Hopefully this weekend will bring some better fishing. I plan on getting back into my kayak after a little hiatus. I’ve been experimenting with some other fishing techniques in hopes of getting a real striper on. Trolling a tube an worm seems to be a great way to hook up with a big cow. So far my tube and worm efforts have gone unrewarded, but I plan on getting some juicy live worms and giving it another shot this weekend. Stay tuned.

 

Tight lines as always

I tried something new to me yesterday. I had never targeted fluke or black sea bass before. I’d picked up some fluke in the past on my fly but they were always tiny and not what I was targeting. The Old Man and I, however, have been growing tired of working awfully hard just to catch some baby stripers. Personally I’ve been putting in too many 4-5 hour days just to walk away with a handful of bass, all under twenty inches. A mild exception occurred last week when I landed into a 24″ fish off the beach. However I was the only one to bring in anything of size and it was one of two fish that I caught in a three hour outing.

So, being sick of wearing out our arms just to catch a couple 10-12″ fish, we decided to explore a new kayak launch point and try our hand at jigging for black sea bass.

We launched at a marina located about a quarter mile up a tidal river. It was just after 4:30 am when we arrived and dawn was still about 20 minutes away. The mosquitoes, however, were up and hungry. With that motivating us, we geared up and launched quickly, making it through the marina and out the channel by 5:00am. A gorgeous sunrise greeted us (regrettably,  I did not snap a photo of it) and we made our way out to some points we had noted on a chart. Neither of us have a fish finder on our yaks, so we weren’t able to get real time readings of the bottom structure. I have been playing with a new chart app on my phone, Navionics and I used it as best I could to move us near marked rocks. We also had some physical markers denoting a channel and one of them sat on it’s own rock island, so we knew of some areas to hit right off the bat.

Our basic strategy was to paddle against the now incoming tide towards the open bay. We would then let the current take us back in while we jigged the bottom, paddling as necessary to drift over some key areas. We both began the day rigged with a single Deadly Dick.

I was using green and I believe the Old Man was as well. A few passes, and we were definitely getting harassed by some life on the bottom. I had picked up a small sea robin and the Old Man actually had a sizeable fluke on but it was barely hooked, and with no net it escaped at the side of the boat. At this point, two things happened. One, we met a fellow kayak angler who was very familiar with the turf. Two, I decided to get adventurous and drop a small bucktail jig I tied about 2 feet below the Deadly Dick. I also tipped the jig with a Berkley Gulp sandworm to give some scent.

Our new friend, pedaling a nice Hobie yak, informed us that the black bass season was basically over and they had mostly moved out to deeper waters. This made sense, we knew the season was short and we weren’t hooking up on any. On the other hand, almost immediately after adding the bucktail jig dropper, I pulled up a small fluke. With the Old Man’s lost keeper sized fluke and my little one on our minds, we decided to keep doing our drift thing but really target the fluke.

Sea robins are a pain in the butt. I could feel them constantly pecking at the Berkeley Gulp worm. It seemed like every time I reeled up, I was missing a bit more. Even the Old Man, who was still on a solo Deadly Dick was getting constantly harassed. Finally one of the robins at least had the decency to hook himself and the Old Man boated it. A minute with the knife and suddenly we had some fluke bait. I kept the little bit of rubber worm on my jig hook and added a chunk of the robin to it.

We paddles up and drifted again. We were about midway through the drift, getting molested my crabs and more, now canabalistic, sea robins. Then I hooked up. I could tell it wasn’t very large, but it didn’t feel like a fluke or a robin. I brought it up to the surface and discovered that apparently not all the black bass were gone. Just the big ones.

He was only about 13-14″. Far too small to keep but being my first, I finally got a good look at how beautiful they are.

After that fish’s release, it went back to being fairly quiet. By this point it was about 9:00am, the sun was out and the day was really warming up fast. The power boats had woken up and were now buzzing around, some heading off shore and others stopping around us to fish the same drift. “A couple more drifts.” we said before we’d pack it in for the day.

I finally got the hook up I’d been waiting for. It felt larger and took me a minute to get it up to the surface. I could see it was a decent sized fluke. Without a net, getting fluke into the boat can be a little tricky. Luckily in my case, I had a solid hook set and was able to lift him with my line. Once a fluke gets to be a decent size though, there isn’t much to grab on to so if you are targeting them I recommend a net. Regrettably I didn’t get a great picture of this fish. It came in at exactly 17″, the minimum to keep it. This was coming home for lunch.

You can see home here in my footwell of my kayak. I had forgotten any kind of stringer material but it was just as well, he survived just fine down there.

I think we put in one more drift after this fish. We let it carry us further in, back towards the mouth of river. It had been a slow but productive day for us. I think we both took it as more a learning experience  than anything else. It was a style of fishing that I was not accustomed to and it’s not something I would want to do every trip. However, if it is a fish dinner you are after I can’t recommend it enough. Fluke is delicious, and I think as long as you go out with some basic information you stand a better chance of coming home with a keeper fluke than a striper especially in the daylight.

I brought that fluke home, beer battered it and pan fried it with some onion rings. While my frying skills need some work, the fish itself was deeeeelicious.

Tight Lines

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my kayak cart for quite some time. I use a home brewed PVC version that pokes into my scupper holes. That part, courtesy of my father, aka the Old Man works wonderfully. Where the cart’s limitations come into play however, are the wheels. I think most folks who build their own carts run into this issue: the sand.

Currently my wheels are of the hard plastic variety. They have a plastic “tire” and wheel is constructed of either HDPE or PVC. Combined with the PVC frame and axles they ride on, it provides for simple and rust free operation. A couple of hitch pins hold the wheels on and make for easy removal should I ever feel the need. On the road they work wonderfully, even hard packed sand is not too much of an issue.  The second they hit the sugar it’s game over though. The weight of the fully rigged boat causes the wheels  to dig in and I’m left struggling. It’s hard enough that usually I just ditch the wheels at that point and drag the yak through the sand or if I’m with someone, have them help me carry it. The stress this induces to the cart has warped the PVC axles. It is also terrible for the health of my scupper holes, an area that is already advised against by many for attaching carts.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me lusting after a set of Wheeleez.

These things look great. They are tough and durable and float on the sand allowing easy travel. The kicker though, is that they are CRAZY expensive. I would be looking at almost $200 JUST for the wheels. I’ve been scouring the web for cheaper alternatives but the few I see generally have less than stellar reviews and cost almost as much. It’s not that I’m opposed to spending the money, they seem to be a worthwhile investment. Right now I just have better things to spend $200 on.

Being the DIY type that I am, I began looking for options. I considered scavenging the wide plastic wheels from a kids “power wheels” car. I worried that they still wouldn’t float on the sand like I wanted and that they would be terrible loud while on any kind of hard surface. The worst of both worlds. That’s when I found the following videos:

 

I like these. They may not be the perfect design, but I think both of these guys have provided a great starting point. I’ve been mulling over the designs in my head and thinking of ways I could improve them. For the amount of hard surface travel I do, I worry about the durability of the exposed tube. These utility tubes always seem pretty tough though, and at the low pressure I’d be running I think they will hold up just fine. Hell, even if I only got a season out of them, at >$10 each I could still run the system for almost 10 years before I broke even on the Wheeleez.

I’m going to get these going in the next week or so. I’ll try to document my build as much as I can in order to help anyone looking to do the same. Stay tuned.

Tight lines