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!!

Hahahahahahahahahaha My wife and kids are in Alaska!! They left back during the first week of June and won't be back until August 15th! That's the ONLY reason I'm getting so much time on the water!! Usually I'm limited to one day per weekend and then I sneak in a few trips down to the pond behind the house during the evenings or during my lunch breaks. It's got some good fish in it but it's nothing like Clear Lake!

Nope, not Navy. I'm in the Coast Guard. I've been active duty now for just over 12 years. I'm an E6 and just took a teaching position last year at the Coast Guards Training Center in Petaluma, CA where I teach marine electronics to aspiring young Electronics Technicians. I've been enjoying my night trips the last two weeks. I've got another report to post up from the weekend prior to this one as well. I'm heading back up to Clear Lake again this Friday afternoon and will be fishing until Sunday morning. Looking to stack some bass, but when the bite dies at sun up I may actual target these big channel cats since they are so hungry and willing to feed right now. I've got some friends that want to have a fish fry so packing a cooler with catfish fillets might just be a good way to fill my daytime as well as feed some friends!

So now I was back at Clear Lake. It was about 6:30pm when I launched out into a slight breeze that was just enough to keep the bugs off of me. Again I was fishless until the sun had completely disappeared. I started off my night battling the catfish again. I've caught plenty of catfish over the years on artificials but never have I caught so many with such regularity!! The bass bite was slower than usual but seemed to really turn on at around 2am. I fished until 10:30am on Sunday morning and by that time I had had enough. I actually caught myself nodding off between casts and at one point I passed out and woke up a couple hundred yards away from my last known location. So all in all I spent 51 hours in the kayak during my marathon fishing adventure. I caught a ton of bass with seventeen of them being over 18" in length, and six of them being over 20"! I also had seven channel cats between 25" and 31.5". For my saltwater trip I caught the two lingcod and a bunch of juvi rockfish. It was not a bad way to spend the weekend!!

So after crashing a little after 4am at my campsite I got in a decent amount of sleep before waking up at 11am to shower, pack, and check out of my campground by the noon deadline on Friday. It didn't really matter as I didn't plan on doing any fishing this day anyway. I needed to get my things organized and make the 2 hour drive from Clear Lake over to the coast at the mouth of the Albion River where it dumps into the Pacific Ocean. The Albion Open Tournament was scheduled for Saturday morning and this would be my first saltwater tournament after moving to the West coast a year ago. I had no experience in the area and would just be going out blind on Saturday morning to see if I could get lucky. I got settled into my campsite Friday afternoon, headed up to Fort Bragg, CA to get a bite to eat, and then it was time to catch some shut eye until Saturday morning. The forecast wasn't looking great but I was assured by some other anglers that it would be doable until the winds picked up at midday. I woke up Saturday morning to a dead calm. The river was still pouring towards the ocean as the tide was falling and things were actually looking pretty nice. I switched out all my gear, donned my drysuit and PFD, checked my GPS and VHF radio and made my way down river towards the mouth. Just after crossing under the Albion River bridge I made the left turn into the cove. I was greated by some pretty nice swells and lots of folks could be seen that decided to stay close due to weather conditions. I don't believe the swells were much more than six foot on a consistant basis but there were definitely some bigger sets thrown in on occasion! I watched my fish finder as I headed out towards deep water and found some good structure along a rock break in 40ft of water. I dropped a 4oz diamond jig in glow color down through the marks on the screen and started verticle jigging. Lots of juvenile rockfish bombarded my bait but none were much over 12". I caugh black rockfish, blue rockfish, and a china rockfish in shallow. I soon headed out towards the whistle buoy where a good group could be seen drifting in open water. I found a nice reef to the south of the Albion River opening that rose from 130' to 20' in spots. I began repeatedly making the drift while bouncing a 3" jig with a halloween colored Big Hammer swimbait. I was rewarded with a 25" and 30" lingcod for my efforts but didn't have much other luck than that. I got tired of bouncing around out there at around 11:30am and made my way back into the launch. The tide had turned by that time and the ride back to camp was an easy and relaxing one once I made it back into the river. It reminded me a lot of my time in Alaska! There were some serious stringers of fish caught that morning and a few guys even got lucky and pulled some +20lb salmon in so I knew I didn't have a chance with just my lingcod. I filleted my fish and packed my gear. I couldn't get Clear Lake off my mind so instead of staying and fishing a bumpy ocean again on Sunday I decided to drive back to the lake for some more night fishing.

So last weekend I decided I needed to take a couple days off. I don't have a class right now to teach so my chief had no issues with me having Thursday and Friday off to make a trip North. My plan was to head up to Clear Lake for some nighttime bass fishing for a few days and then make a run to the coast on Friday afternoon to fish the Albion Open Tournament on Saturday morning. I packed all my gear to fish and camp in the Trailblazer and struck out right after work on Wednesday afternoon. It takes me about 2 hours to get to the mid lake area of Clear Lake where the State Park is located. This would be my home base for the first couple trips/days. I started Wednesday night around 7:30pm. Launching my Hobie Pro Angler 14 into the lake I headed for the same general area that had produced for me the weekend prior. Normally the fading light of the evening sun makes for some great fishing but on this day that wasn't the case. The wind was blowing around 10mph from the North and had the water pretty choppy in the open areas. I had caught fish on the last trip by sitting in 7-10' of water and casting parallel to the submergent vegetation with a variety of lures including lipless crankbaits, colorado blade spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, jigs, and 10" Berkeley Power Worms. I figured I would start with this same technique to see if I could get any action. As the sun set the bite was pretty much nonexistant so I was hopeful that with night fall the bite would pick up. Just like clockwork as soon as the sun had completely set and the shadows started taking over the fish activity picked up. I headed for a small island with a good drop off on the leeward edge that had some rocks for cover. My first cast was to the tip of the island and the water exploded as my bait hit the surface. I set the hook but immediately could tell this was no largemouth like I was hoping for. It was big though and towed me around the lake pretty easily as I waited for it to come to the surface. I was a pretty good distance away from the island by the time my sleigh ride was over so I turned on my headlamp and watched as a beautiful 14lb 7oz channel cat came rolling to the surface. I hadn't caught one yet this year, mainly b/c I don't target them, but needed a good one to enter in the NorCalKayakAngler.com AOTY constest. This one measured in at a little better than my 31" Hawg Trough could handle. I guestimated her at 31.5" just to be safe, took a pic, and released her back into the dark water. I continued working this area and a few submerged offshore humps for the rest of the night. The fish were hit or miss and no specific lure seemed to attract more attention than another. I managed a couple of nice bass at 22" and 21.5" and a bunch of other solid but smaller fish with none going less than 17". I finally made my way off the water on Thursday morning at 8:30am and headed for the State Park to register for a campsite and get some sleep. I would be meeting a friend, Yia Yang, later that afternoon for some bassin and definitely needed some rest if I was to make it through another night. Sleep was hard to come by in the heat of the day in Lake County. Temps were in the high 90's and being inside a tent just made it that much worse. I'm sure I dosed off a few times but by noon I decided I couldn't take it any longer and would just hit the water again. I fished for most of the day with little to no action. I tried every lure and technique I could think of with the exception of live bait (just b/c I can't stand fishing live bait!) and rarely could I even draw a half hearted strike. Just before Yia showed up at 7:00pm I came across a fish that was busting on some small minnows in a pocket of a rock bank. I flipped a D&M Custom Piranha swim jig to the fish and it inhaled it as it broke the waters surface. Nothing big, but a relief to have something stretch my line after seven hours of nothing!! This one proved to be the smallest fish of my weekend but was still a nice little chunk! Yia called me on the cell phone and said that he was at the launch and would be out to meet me on the lake in approximately 30min. I headed for the launch and fished just outside of the launch area. This spot is kind of a community hole and is hit by every Tom, Dick, and Harry on tournament days. Even though it gets all that pressure it has always given up fish to me as I come and go from the ramp. Sure enough after probing the area for a few minutes I get slammed in about 13 feet of water where the marina channel exits the shallow launch bay. Again, it didn't take long for me to figure out it wasn't a bass. My "fluke" catfish from the night before apparently wasn't such a fluke! LOL Once again it was well after dark before the bite picked up. Yia and I worked everything from shallow grassy areas out to deep water rock piles. It seemed that the deep water bite was where the action was but the wind was making it tough to get our drift right. Yia's Eddyline Carribean 14 is a sleek paddle craft that sits low and doesn't catch much wind, but when trying to fish deep water structure a set of pedals would have really come in handy for him! We moved off the open water structure to work some areas on the back side of a point that had trees to block the wind. The bite was slow but steady until after Yia had to head for home. He left around midnight because he had to work the next morning and I stayed out until 4am before calling it a night to get some sleep. A few more good fish were caught though so it was worth it!

A friend has a Mazda 3 and tows his Harley Sportster 1200 all over the South with it on a small utility trailer. He has never had any issues. As had been said though you need to mind your braking. Begin braking early, don't hit excessive speeds, and don't tow in overdrive if you have any kinds of hills. People have towed all sorts of things with small Subaru's and 4 cylinders for years!

Everyone keeps mentioning the Jitterbug and while it is an awesome lure and a great night time producer the fish don't always want a topwater at night! I've been on a steady night bite at Clear Lake here in California for the last two weeks and have yet to put one in the boat on a topwater lure. Think movement of water, vibration, and big profile when picking lures. I like spinnerbaits (with colorado blades), chatterbaits, big wake baits that can crank down like M.S. Slammer or 3:16 Bait Co Wake Jrs, jigs with rattles, big 10" worms, or the larger style beaver soft plastics and creature baits. I'm writing a report now from this past weekend. In three trips I managed seventeen bass over 18" with five of them being over 20". My biggest from the weekend was 22". For some reason I was also slamming the big channel cats on my artificials. I caught 7 big cats between 25" and 32". The biggest one weighed in at 14lbs 7oz!

Here's a couple pics of my trailer setup. It's a single place kayak trailer with a galvanized pipe constructed rack on top to hold camping gear or another kayak. The rack on the tongue had to go do to the length and position of my Pro Angler 14. The top rack is held on with pins and can be removed if not needed although I never take it off. It's worked great for me for the last year. I'm in the market for another Pro Angler 14 and will probably sell this trailer to buy a side by side jetski trailer so that I don't have to lift one onto the top rack. I may have a rack like this one built on top of it as well though. It's just too nice being able to strap stuff up top rather than taking up space inside my SUV.

I made this one using a 52qt cooler, a Bait Saver Aerator kit with a 500gph bilge pump, and a couple of bubble boxes. It's got two overflow tubes so that I can leave the "fill" pump running if I want or I can turn it off and just use the bubble boxes to provide oxygen to my fish. A little Rejuvenade in the water and a bit of ice here and there to control the water temp in the hotter summer months and all is good. I've had 22lb of largemouth in there all day with no issues.

Yep, the offer runs through July 15th. You still have a few days left. Here is the link to the original posting that explains what you need to do. http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/137478-savage-gear-buy-1-review-get-2-free/?hl=%2Bsavage+%2Bgear