Rookie Mistakes: Lessons learned kayak fishing

Alternatively called "The Lounge"
Post Reply
User avatar
awesome guy
Posts: 54187
Joined: Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:10 pm
Party: After 10
Location: Plastic Flotilla:Location Classified

Rookie Mistakes: Lessons learned kayak fishing

Post by awesome guy »

http://www.paddleva.com/rookie-mistakes ... k-fishing/

I'll add

Work into it. Don't expect to go out and be a badarse standing up on your Tarpon 120 while double fisting bull drum on Diamond Shoals. This is common sense, start out small and build yourself up. Like first go to a lake and learn the boat. Then learn to stand on it if you want to. And then move onto lazy rivers, to more current, to the bay, to the ocean, etc. Actually the bay is more challenging than the open ocean in a lot of circumstances, but you get the idea.

the kayak itself is a weapon. Don't think like a boater, think like a kayaker! You have much more water available to you since you can get to pretty much anywhere on the water, including those 1 foot shoals most boats will beach on. When trolling, you control the boat movement. So don't think in terms of keeping a linear track at a constant speed. Use the kayak to stop, allow lures to sink or rise (depending on what they are) and make erratic movements that look more like a fish. Or behave like one. One example is the stunned fish movement. When I'm trolling jerk baits and get short struck, I'll either stop the kayak and then fire off a strong stroke or pick up the road, feel it backs a bit, and then give it a strong flutter after a pause. This simulates a stunned fish. So the fish that struck thinks it stunned my lure and then will attack once it looks like it snapped out of it and is trying to escape. I got about half my stripers that I trolled for this spring using this technique, hooking them on the flutter after the pause. I also outfished my buddies 2 to 1 as they were leaving the rod on the holder and not messing with the rod till the fish was on. Doing it by hand works best, but you can slow down and then speed up the kayak once you feel the strike and miss.
Unvaccinated,. mask free, and still alive.
Post Reply