Kayak Koz

I was never much of a drinker, but in the last year I’ve enjoyed sampling different whiskies. I enjoyed Uncle Nearest 1856, but lately I’ve enjoyed Knobel. I couldn’t find it where I used to live, but I found it in my new location. For those that don’t know, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs founded Knobel. It’s named after his grandfather. I was enjoying the Rickhouse and Just the Juice varieties, but the other day I found the Barrel Strength variety. This batch came in at 120.8 proof. It’s got some kick. But as an added bonus, this bottle happens to be autographed by Mike Rowe himself. It’s probably worth more unopened, but what good is that?

The new Garmin kayak motor is $3,500. It's also a stern mount motor with spot lock and can be controlled with wireless foot pedals. You will love spot lock and hate spot lock. On windy days with shifting winds and currents it will move you around more than you would like, especially because a lightweight (compared to a boat) kayak is essentially a sail - but you know that from paddling. If you're like me, you may also find that you're facing in the wrong direction when you want to spot lock. So what I do is loop around so my bow faces the wind before I engage spot lock. In fact, if it's windy out, when I get to the ramp, if possible, I plan my initial route so I'm heading into the wind. But sometimes it's hard to spot lock and skip under docks when it's windy out. What I'm getting at is that spot lock is great, but it has its limitations,.

How do you like the Terrova? I see that you have a Garmin fishfinder. Do you think you'll add a Humminbird unit to run waypoints or are you content with the One Boat Network app? I know that you can program routes with the Terrova (like with the Autopilot trolling motor) but you have to run and store those routes first. I like everything about the new Garmin kayak motor except the price. That got me thinking about the Terrova, but I'd also need a new Humminbird unit because my old Helix 7 can't integrate with the Terrova. What do you like most about the Terrova? Least?

"Wicked cool." You're a Mainer, all right. I once had a red tailed hawk swoop down and grab my Whopper Plopper and take off with it. Luckily it dropped it before it started pulling drag.

I have been blessed, although I'm not catching 40,000 bass a year like you are! I wouldn't make that trade, but it's close 😁

That's exactly what put me off last week. If I bought, I have a couple of 100Ah and 36Ah batteries from my kayak that would work. I already have FFS and some graphs I could port over. But the upgraded trolling motor, larger graph, mounting the graphs, wiring, installation costs, and a host of other items really jacked up the price. I can afford it, but I just wasn't comfortable shelling out all of that money. I even thought of selling my current kayak and building a new kayak package, but I couldn't justify the cost in my mind. I'm too frugal.

It's been a pretty good year. I met a beautiful woman and fell in love. I switched jobs and I'm in the midst of opening two new Marriott hotels. My health has been good. Not a bad year so far. But I haven't fished a lot this year since I moved from my lake house in March. I have only fished one tournament way back in February. All week long I think about taking my kayak out on the weekend, but when that alarm goes off at 4:30 or 5 am I'm just not motivated. Hopefully, with the summer lake traffic over with I'll get out there this fall.

OK - I'll fess up. I once spent five minutes leaning over the dock while peering into the hatch and trying to find a phantom wiring / power problem on my kayak only to realize the kill switch had been pulled.

When the ice forms, you could always practice skipping baits 😁 I'm lucky to live in the south so I can fish year round. If it's not too cold or windy I will be on the lake whenever I get the chance. But in general, I'll pull apart my rods and reels. I will change the pairing of some. I also do trailer maintenance for my kayak and general maintenance on the kayak as well. Usually, this time of year I'm also adding new equipment or making modifications to my kayak. This year I'm thinking of ditching my 7" Humminbird Helix. Right now I run that and a Garmin UHD93. But I think I want to replace the Helix with a 10" or 12" Garmin unit and then network the units.

I was going to make a funny comment but then thought I might jinx myself. Glad you're OK and didn't lose your kayak.

Other than the dates, most of my pages are blank 😁

The old conundrum - reaction bites versus how many fish did you spook when the bait hit the water. The world may never know. Actually - I will say this. In clear water I have seen bass spook when the bait flies over their heads and beyond them. They flee before the bait even hits the water.

I priced custom trailers. There's no way I'm paying $4k - $6k for a kayak trailer. My kayak is a little high because I use carpeted bunks. They keep the kayak more sable when being transported and I'm not going to bash my transducer on the trailer frame. Thinking more, I may be able to use steel perforated angle and mount the base directly to that and do away with the clamps. I water launch and retrieve. With all of the batteries, electronics, motor, and gear it's much too heavy to move around. Even with a cart, it would be a tough pull up a ramp. I can get it in and out quicker than most boaters, so I'm not blocking the ramp.

I had thought about that when I first got the rod box. But the rod box is too tall to fit under there. Even if it could slip in, you couldn't open the lid and the brackets to hold it in place on the crossbar are inside the lid. As it stands right now, the rod box is lower then the roofline of the vehicle and although it is off center, it is still behind the vehicle and doesn't hang out and catch the wind. Another option is to drill a few holes in the lower trailer crossbars and bolt on a 2x4 and mount the arms to that. I would get rid of the lower, clamped bracket and mount the columns directly. Actually, no matter how I do this I think I'll get rid of the clamps and bolt that bottom bracket directly. I need to go take a look at things.

I did think about welding it or using epoxy. But the issue is that the supports are turned 90 degrees which means the unit loses rigidity when assembled and those posts will catch more wind. That causes greater shearing forces and reduces aerodynamics. I need to think about it some more, but the best solution will be raising it 2” - 3” with square tubing as I mentioned. Then again, I did go to a boat dealer yesterday. If interest rates come down, I may scrap the kayak altogether.

A month or so ago I traded the stock 8" tires for 10" tire on my Malone Ecolight trailer and I'm really happy with that change. But I wanted to address a few additional problems with my travel setup. The first is traveling with my Yakima rod box on top of my Bronco Sport. The first problem is that it knocks 5 MPG off of my fuel mileage. That's not a big deal fishing locally, but often I travel 200 - 900 miles for tournaments. That's where storage also comes into play. With the rod box on the roof I need to also pack a step stool so that I can access it. If I ditch the rod box altogether, the rods stretch into the cabin of my Bronco and between coolers, suitcases, kayak motor, and bins for tackle it gets crowded in there. I prefer to have some space to take a quick nap on really long trips. My solution was a Haul Master truck rack from Harbor Freight. But while I solved the problems above, it created more. First off, the side pieces for the racks should run down the left and right sides of the trailer frame. Unfortunately, that's much too low to fit the kayak on the trailer. My solution was to mount them on the crossbars. That spins the uprights 90 degrees and it means they will catch more wind. That makes me worry about flexing. I think the solution is to buy two more Malone crossbars and mount them perpendicular and on top of the current crossbars and mount the uprights to those. That would solve another issue I have. That issue is that my 9" Garmin graph can't fit under the new crossbars. That means that I have to install that unit after I launch. Not impossible, but a pain nonetheless. What gets me was that it was only about 1/4". I measured before I bought the kit, but I was off a bit as it was hard to measure the kayak sitting on the bunks. But there was another clearance issue with my BlackPak crate. Actually, it's the Shortstak upgrade that's the problem. With that additional storage on top of the Blackpak it won't under the new crossbars. Adios! The next problem is my fishing rods when I launch. Normally when I stage in the parking lot I put my rods in their rod holders and launch. I can't do that with the new top crossbars, so I will have to lay them down in the kayak when I launch. So, while not a total disaster, it's not what I wanted out of this project. I'm going to scrap it for now and then buy crossbars I can mount on the trailer fram on top of the current crossbars and perpendicular to those. That will give me the clearance I need for my Garmin and allow me to orient the track rack uprights in the correct direction. With them mounted a I have them below, I think they will catch too much wind and put a lot of tress on the clamps. It will work, I just need a bit more engineering.

Not with the duck around. I moved west to one of the AI waypoints and landed a 5+ pounder. It was the only bite I had in my three hours out there. I headed west from the ramp and made a long run even though I knew it was probably low percentage fishing based upon my previous experience on Tobesofkee. But I wanted to try out some of the new spots recommended by AI. I saw only one boat out on that section of the lake. This weekend I'm going to hit an electric or idle speed only lake. I'm not sure which one.

My personal opinion is that on cloudy days the bass are more likely to be roaming. On Sunny days I think that you're more likely to find a bass just sitting under cover or near structure. But when the water is hot and it's sunny out, I have found the bass tend to be deeper and make a hit and run quickly to the shore to feed on baitfish.

I'll check that out. I used Garmin BaseCamp but it did not even show a lake where my waypoints were when in fact, it was a lake.

This guy followed me around for about 90 minutes today and would swim right next to my seat only inches from the kayak. I’m not sure if he was hungry or trying to tell me that I was fishing in the wrong spot.

It just cut off the extra characters.

I got it to import my map symbols, but still not the comments. So, I downloaded Garmin BaseCamp, imported my file, then added my comments. That ended up working. Looking at the file exported from BaseCamp, it called additional schema that I had not included in my test files. But it wasn't perfect. For example, in BaseCamp the map showed an empty area and not Lake Tobesofkee. Then, on my UHD 93 import it did not import the symbols for humps or for rocks. I had to edit that from the UHD93. Garmin really needs to allow for more than 25 characters in the comment / description field. I'm going to import these into my Helix next.

Thanks. I thought about special characters and removed them in another test and it still failed using <cmt>. That field is limited to 25 characters on my unit so I did another test import with the comment field only 22 characters and it failed. I did send an email to Garmin this morning. In the meantime, I'll revisit what you said and try some XML editors.

I've created waypoints that I want to upload to my UHD93. Everything looks fine when the data is like this: <wpt lat="32.829283" lon="-83.772517"> <name>Claystone marina docks & ramp</name> </wpt> But if I add a comment lines it fails to import: <wpt lat="32.829283" lon="-83.772517"> <name>Claystone marina docks & ramp</name> <cmt>Early/late: pitch 5–6" curly-tail Texas rig (red shad/green pumpkin) under floats work dock lights after dark. Midday backup: slow a shaky head along shade lines.</cmt> </wpt> I also replaced <cmt> and </cmt> with <desc> and </desc> and it still fails. It's frustrating because when I export my existing waypoints the schema looks like this and includes the <cmt> tags: <wpt lat="34.7973000258" lon="-82.8965000063"> <time>2025-08-31T11:56:52Z</time> <name>Oconee Nuc</name> <cmt>TEST COMMENT</cmt> <sym>Fishing Area 4</sym> <extensions> <gpxx:WaypointExtension> <gpxx:DisplayMode>SymbolAndName</gpxx:DisplayMode> </gpxx:WaypointExtension> <uuidx:uuid>5740d844-d6c2-4f2b-a562-7cfc7d202b6f</uuidx:uuid> </extensions> </wpt> I tried truncating the comment line to less than 25 characters and it still fails. Any suggestions?

Why?