Ring King

Been catching a bunch of shallow fish lately in Sparkleberry Swamp just above the railroad trestle. Fish have been mostly on tress in less than 5ft of water. Frog early and then flip the cypress trees with soft plastics or run a spinner bait or blades jig near them once the sun is up.

Head over to the Hobie forums and check out the Hobie Fishing section. There is a thread on there right now about the Hobie i11s. The guys are using them for saltwater fishing and crabbing in the bays and ocean here in the Pacific North West. I'd say if they're dependable enough for that then some bass fishing should be a piece of cake from one. I'm on the Hobie Fishing Team but have zero experience with the inflatables. Wish I could help more!

USCG Active Duty Electronics Technician First Class 2002-Present

I have fished 5 of the 12 and live an hour and a half from the three in California!

And????? They aren't Blue Water LED lights and I didn't use some cheap, 3058, non sealed ones from Amazon. I wanted quality 5050, epoxy sealed, non yellowing LED strips for my install so I went with a name brand and proven company. Am I affiliated with that company in any way? Not other than I purchased a few of their components for this install. I didn't even purchase one of their kits as I wanted different switches and didn't see the need to pay for the extra wire, zip ties, and cable management pads that are included in them since I have all that stuff at home already. I am a marine electronics technician by trade and wanted things done to my specs.

So I'm seeing more and more posts about lighting for night fishing. I installed SuperNovaFishingLights on one of my Hobie Pro Angler 14s last week. I finally got around to taking a pic of the finished product. I have two of their 20" blue LED strips on the outside of the bow to light banks. These lights also have UV properties that will react with any of the Hi vis UV lines. I have these lights rigged with a dimmer inline so that I can control their intensity. Full strength is great for fishing by myself but it's nice to be able to reduce their power when fishing with others so that I don't blind everyone. The dimmer has a very small IR remote control that's a little smaller than a credit card. It can control intensity and also has a "mode" feature if you want to have a disco party out on the water!! LOL For the inside cockpit lighting I used two of the Super Nova 4" red LED strips attached under the side mounting boards. I cannot dim these but since I don't run them all the time it doesn't really matter, and when I do I want them bright so that I can tie knots, deal with fish, or whatever. The Super Nova kits come with toggle switches. I didn't want toggle switches as I figured I would just snap them off so I purchased a pair of red and blue LED lighted flush mount anti-vandal switches. I mounted these in the side rail just below my depth finder and the rudder deployment handle. The system works great and the install turned out pretty sweet. My only piece of advise for those interested in installing LED lighting is to make sure you understand the power draw. Most people are under the assumption that LED lights dont draw much power. That's true for single lights. However, when you get into LED strip lighting the power consumption can be pretty substantial depending on how many you install. Super Nova recommends an 18aH battery for thier kayak kits. This would need to be a separate battery from the one you use for your depth sounder if you plan on fishing for any substantial amount of time. Your depth finder has minimum voltage requirements that are well above that of the LED light strips. In order to power my Humminbird 859ci HD DI and my Super Nova LED lights for a full night of fishing (dusk till dawn) I am running two 22aH 12v SLA batteries. This is still overkill for what I need but I'd rather have too much power than not enough. For most trips I'll just run a single battery with everything hooked to it since the LED strips won't be used unless I'm night fishing.

I guess it all depends on what you are looking to spend and how "trick" you want your setup to be. You could purchase a section of Yak Attack Gear Trac to mount on your Bass Baby and then use a Yak Attack Cell Block to hold a small 7aH SLA battery to power the unit. The Cell Block has RAM balls on top to mount a depth finder on as well as the RAM transducer deployment arm that would be fully adjustable and the entire system could be removed from the Gear Trac as one piece for easy storage and transport. Lots of kayakers use this system. Or if you didn't need the battery you could simply install a section of Yak Attack Gear Trac to the boat and then purchase the Madd Frog or Harmony Liberator that comes with the transducer deployment arm. You would bolt your depth finder to the plate and the transducer to the end of the deployment arm and then use the supplied thumb screws to secure it to the Gear Trac when you wanted to fish. It would still be removeable as a single unit for storage or transport. http://www.crappie.com/crappie/attachments/kayaks-canoes-and-other-small-watercraft/100561d1347147564-meet-fatboy-ff-rod-holder-ride-115-jpg

Is your's a 59ci motor? If you so you have a beast on your hands. It's a fantastic motor and is extremely fast for the HP rating. You can buy a kit that will hop it up to 66hp or so and is fairly simple to install. I had a 2003 model. The 40hp, 50hp, and 60hp motors in the 59ci models all shared the same block so getting more horsepower reliably is a fairly simple process. I had mine on the back of an Xpress 1651 Hyperlift hull (pad hull) that was set up for tiller steering. I ran 44mph empty and the hull would air out pretty good with that little motor on it.

I'm currently running a pair of Hobie Pro Angler 14's for my 12 year old son and myself. I have a 2010 PA14 with a Humminbird 587ci HD DI with the transducer rigged on a Mad Frogg Transducer Deployment Arm that is attached to the starboard mounting board. That boat was passed down to my son when I just purchased my new PA14. I have ordered a Humminbird 859ci HD DI for mine with another Mad Frogg Transducer Deployment Arm for the transducer mount.

Gloves are a must in my book for those salty critters. The lingcod have some serious fang issues and are not to be messed with even with gloves on!! The rest of them have more of a bristly mouth similar to bass or catfish but on a larger scale. You can lip them bare handed but after a full day of doing it or if you get a fiesty one that thrashes around they'll definitely make you bleed. The gloves aren't anything crazy. Just some light synthetic gardening gloves with rubber dipped palms. They provide just enough protection from getting torn up without losing too much feel or being too bulky. I've always prided myself as being a bass fisherman. I grew up following my Dad around on all his tournament trails and that's really all I knew until high school or so. Then I started hooking up with friends on inshore saltwater trips or even some offshore stuff in the Carolinas. Joining the Coast Guard took me on adventures all over the US and in some spots saltwater was much easier to get to and sometimes was the only option for fishing. Out here in California I fish off the coast more to put fish on the table rather than for fun. These fish are fantastic table fare!!! It doesn't hurt that the lingcod and cabezone are also high scoring fish for Kayak Wars either. They're worth 30 points a piece where as bass are only worth 10 points a piece!

So I started out this weekend again at Clear Lake looking for more night time bass. The daytime bite has been all but nonexistant for me the last month or so which is why I've been fishing all night long as much as possible. This evening started out a bit different. Right off the bat I started chunking an 8" Triple Trout around a grass bed that drops into a 13ft deep channel. I knew one little section of the grass that was right on the break line also contained about a dozen basketball sized boulders clumped together. I've been catching a couple decent fish a night there so I figured I would see what the swimbait could do. On the first cast I had a hook up almost immediately. The fish freight trained into the grass and managed to pull loose. On the next cast I stuck a giant!! The fish came up twice and jumped regardless of how low I was keeping my rod tip as I pulled back. She was easily 9lbs but I don't think she would have gone over ten. She made one last jump beside the kayak as I stretched out with the net to scoop her. The bait came free in the air and I reached as far as I could but just couldn't quite get under her before she landed back in the water to swim away. I let the area settle for a bit and made a big circle casting around other isolated grass clumps. There were no takers. Eventually I made it back to where I had the first two hits. Again I cast into the small pocket and was slammed within a couple turns of the reel handle. This one stayed buttoned up and weight 5lbs 7oz. She was to be my biggest fish of the "night". Over all the average size was much smaller this weekend that it has been for the past month. I caught a decent number of fish (somewhere around 16) but there were a good number of 15-17" fish. I only had two others Friday night that went over 18" and I didn't catch a single channel cat this time even though I packed a cooler to take a few home if I did happen to get into them again. Then today it was back to the saltwater. I'm trying to stock up on some fresh fish for a fish fry to treat the guys I work with. I headed just up the road to Timber Cove again. The forecast was for 5ft swells at 8sec with a gradual calming throughout the day. I launched into the "worst" of it at 7am and started catching fish right off the bat. There was a huge school of mackeral that were covering the cove like nothing I've ever seen before. They were were almost so thick that you could walk on them!! LOL Everything was busy feeding on them and there was constantly something to watch. Sea lions were rushing through the schools, a couple 6-8ft blue sharks were working the edges, the birds were diving, and larger predatory fish were busting up through them from underneath. I even watched a small lingcod go airborn after a couple of them. I worked a couple different colors of the 6" Big Hammer swimbaits and caught fish pretty steadily all day. The highlights of the trip were a 35" smurf lingcod, a 21.5" cabezon, and a 17.5" vermillion rockfish. Be on the lookout for my next report as I took vacation days on this coming Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday!!

Hey!!! There's a familiar face! What's going on Chuck? I'm at work this morning chomping at the bit to get back on the water! We are getting off today at 11am so I should be able to hit Clear Lake by no later than 4pm. Still need to run home and pack all my gear and make a quick stop at the Outdoor Pro Shop (Monster Tackle) on the way up. Looking forward to whacking a few more good chunks tonight!

No complaints at all. I'm actually in the market for a second one. My 11 year old is getting a little big to be riding on the back of mine so I'm going to give him my current one (2012 model) and I'm going to buy the newer model for myself. I've been fishing out of this Hobie Pro Angler 14 since March of 2012 and have had a blast. I fished bass tournaments as well as inshore saltwater tournaments out of it in Florida (Jax Kayak Classic, North Florida Kayak Challenge, North East Florida Sportsman Bash, etc.) and won a pretty good chunk of change in it. I also drove it up to South Carolina two years ago and fished the KayakBassFishing.com Open tournament on Santee Cooper. I finished 14th out of 160 or so anglers which was good enough to qualify me for the KayakBassFishing.com Invitational. That was a televised event with some serious competition!!! I ended up in 8th place for that event. Since moving out here to the West coast last summer I've won and placed in a couple belly boat bass club events. There wasn't much in the way of kayak bass events but it's getting better. I'm currently in 4th place overall for the Delta Kayak Bass Series with one event left to go. I'm hoping to win a new fully outfitted Jackson Kayak Kilroy if things go well on August 17th! It's an insanely stable platform with an unreal carrying capacity at 600lbs! Having moved into this from bass boats it was quite a compromise to downsize and this Pro Angler 14 made the transition that much less painful. I fish with a lot of paddle kayaks and while they do have their advantages it's undeniable that when fishing stiff winds or current the Mirage Drive has the advantage in holding position and even when trying to make headway. I've fished saltwater tournaments in 35mph winds before on open water and easily passed up paddle yaks that were struggling to make headway. The pedal drives are just too efficient in those conditions to be overlooked. This particular model's only downfall would be the weight. Not that it isn't manageable as I've drug this thing all over Hell and back but it is something to consider when purchasing. When I was in Florida I had a full size Chevy Z71 and simply slid it in the bed with a bed extender for support. I sold the truck in Florida and I'm now using my wifes Trailblazer SUV to haul it. Originally I would lay the back seats down and again use the bed extender but that left the back hatch open all the time. Not the most comfortable way to travel in the cold or during inclement weather. I purchased a small jetski trailer from Craigslist to haul and store it on and couldn't be happier! When I end up with a second Pro Angler I'm going to sell my current trailer and by a tandem jetski trailer to haul them on. Eventually I'll have four Hobie Mirage kayaks so that the whole family can get out and pedal together but that's a ways out since my little one is only 4 years old right now!!

I don't think I could spend 12 hours fishing from a kayak with a traditional kayak seat. Fishing from my Hobie Pro Angler 14 or any other kayak with a framed seat for long periods of time is a piece of cake. The seats are more than comfortable and if I ever start feeling stiff I just stand up for a bit or take a couple steps forward or backward in the cockpit. Wednesday night and Saturday night I fished for 16.5 hours each! I will admit though that I started to nod off on occasion come Saturday morning. That's when I knew it was time to get off the water!

Charms (Chris Harms) and I launched our Hobie Pro Anglers last night (18JUL14) on Clear Lake at around 7pm. The wind was a little breezy but it was warm and not too busy on the lake so I had high hopes of a successful outing. The evening started slow with only one strike on a frog before night fell. It wasn't until around 10pm that things started heating up. We fished near mid lake in an area that I frequent a good bit so we headed for one of my favorite community holes that has always been good to me in the past. It's a nice moderate sloping drop off from the bank to about 8ft and then it quickly falls off to almost 20ft within a cast's distance. The breeze was blowing across the point and we found that the fish were sitting in 8-10ft of water on the leeward side of the point most likely ambushing bait being blown across the lake by the wind. That one spot accounted for around eight fish and set me up with a pattern for the rest of the night. We worked all over that part of the lake trying to find similar depth and weed patterns as the fish were being very predictable and willing to eat my offerings. By the time it was said and done (7am!!!) I had landed quite a few nice bass with only one falling below the Kayak Wars minimum of 16". My two biggest fish for the night were 22.25" and 22" both right around the 7lb mark. In total I had 24-25lbs of fish with my best five for a total of 101.25"! It was another great night on Clear Lake!!