Kayak Koz

We got him as a rescue 12 years ago and we think he’s 14 or 15 years old. He’s missing most of his teeth, has a narrow windpipe, and a leaky heart valve that’s getting worse. He still runs and plays, but every now and then he has some bad days. Hopefully he has a few more years left in him.

I have one of those. He’s a good boy.

When I get back to the ramp I beach my kayak, back the trailer into the water, move my kayak next to the trailer, clip the winch cable to the bow, push the kayak out behind the trailer into, pull the kayak to the bunks, and winch it in. It sounds complicated, but it goes quickly. I’m in the water a bit, so I wear muck boots when the water is cold and wear my Skechers slip ons when the water is warm. When I unload I push it off the trailer and beach it or use a dock rope and tie it up to the dock while I park my truck. Again, quick and easy. But lately I’ve seen videos of anglers that when they get back to the ramp they spot lock the kayak, back their trailer into the water, then remotely back their Autopilot onto the trailer. I never even thought about spot locking my kayak while grabbing my truck let alone remotely backing it onto the trailer. Have any of you tried that? Right now, my bunks are fairly close together so the grooves in the hull rest on the bunks. So if I tried to back it on like that the motor would hit the bunks. I’d probably have to widen and raise the bunks for this to work on my Malone trailer. To even see if this would work I’d have to adjust the bunks and fit the kayak on dry land so zi would have to remove batteries and equipment to lighten the load. Anyway, has anyone here loaded their AP backwards on their trailer?

Length matters. Said the tournament kayak angler.

See one of my other posts. He was on a podcast last week and discussed how he knew where to fish.

That’s a lot of moving in one year! I’m fortunate that my relocation package includes packing and moving everything. They will pack everything and put in storage until I find a place to live. I’m hesitant to have them move my kayak, so maybe I’ll tow it and rent a storage unit until I find a house.

I went with the Uncle Nearest 1856. My palate is not refined enough to describe it, but I enjoy it more than the Knob Creek 9. In fact, it's smooth enough that you could get into trouble if you're not careful.

Well, I'm entertaining a new job in Charleston, SC and that would wipe out my vacation time. But where I'm looking at living I will be only 40 minutes away from Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, better known as Santee Cooper Lakes. I heard there's some pretty good bass fishing there 😀 But he had fished there before and saw a video of someone pre-fishing and catching them and he knew exactly where that was. He was a Texas angler and familiar with the lake. He did say he caught 40+ fish on the day, although a lot of them were under the limit. Again, when you consider less than 300 fish caught with 173 anglers out there, it was brutal fishing. At lea$t you made $omething happen out there! Bass master has said they will not consider it because of the safety issue. If they did, Steve Owens (TD) said the would have to inspect every kayak to make sure it was seaworthy. They don't have the time and resources to do that. He also stated he doesn't want to take on that safety responsibility.

We’re good, buddy. It’s a healthy discussion. It stinks going into events blind, but with my job ai don’t have another choice. I do have 6 weeks of vacation saved up, but it looks like I’m going to quit my job by January and take a job in a different state.

Yes, not being able to pre fish for 4 or 5 days on a new lake is an absolute handicap. But I do have a job and have responsibilities. As a hotel GM, it’s not like there’s another person to fill my slot when I’m not there. That being said, I do tournaments for the fun and the experience. I don’t fish nearly as much as most of the other anglers and I’m OK with that. I do take the time to study charts and maps, look at Google Earth, and in some cases I can find info on patterns and locations for past BPT and Elite events. DNR websites and fishing guide websites also usually provide information. As someone who power fishes, I’m usually on the move, sometimes to me detrimental. I have been working at staying put in prime locations, but I find it hard to sit in one place and wait for one good bite an hour. I only fished 4 tournaments this year, but next year I plan to fish the full Bass Nation GA or SC tour depending upon where I’m living. The Bassmaster schedule drops next week and depending upon where they are I may fish one or more. Sure, it would be nice to win, but with 200+ anglers at each event the odds are against everyone. Right now I’m in it to learn and have fun and meet some people. Tournament fishing in a kayak is not as easy as it looks. Even the BPT and Elite guys have commented on kayak tournaments being harder keying on the fact that it’s harder to cover water. My gut feeling now is I will buy the XTR next year after I see how others are rigging them and seeing their lists of pros and cons. I’ll probably keep the AP as well, at least for a while.

Tournament fishing is tournament fishing no matter what you are fishing out of. Let’s take a lake like Guntersville for example. The main lake is about 79 miles long and on tournament day a boat can traverse that with no problem. You can pre-fish, study maps and history all you want, but sometimes the fish move. So you have to move. If I’m an hour away from the ramp at 3 mph, that’s an hour to head back then who knows how much time to load and drive to the next ramp. But if I can go 6-9 mph I can cut that time in half or more. Or I can quickly get to another area 4-5 miles away zipping across the lake. As it stands now, I have all my spots mapped out and if I need to move I have to do the math and calculate if it’s quicker to motor to the next spot or head back to the ramp, load up, and drive to the next spot. Anglers like Kristine Fischer regularly talk about covering 12-15 miles from the ramp finding fish. That’s two hours or less of travel time for her and 4-5 hours of travel time for me. I’m hitting almost all of these lakes for the first time and with my work schedule I’m lucky to get in one day of pre-fishing. The more water I can cover pre-fishing - even if I’m just scoping and marking - the better. It’s why boat guys use 200 HP motors and not 40 HP motors. As I have found out, one of the reasons that Hobies dominate kayak events is using faster motors then using the pedal drive in place of spot lock, I’m going to keep an eye on how these new Bonafides are rigged and what kind of speed they are getting. From the looks of them, even with the same motor I don’t think they will be nearly as fast as the Hobies. I think they will be faster than the AP but slower than the Hobie. Even though I like the setup, storage, and balance it may not be enough to get me to make the change. If i was 20 years younger I’d go for it and probably own both kayaks.

I’m going to disagree. Whether it’s pre-fishing or tournaments, the pros are covering water. Maybe it’s only a 5 minute ride by boat, but that’s a 1.5 hour jaunt in a kayak going 3 mph. If a kayak can go 8 mph instead of 3 mph that cuts the travel time to 37 minutes. Livescope takes some of the guesswork out of fishing, especially when finding bait and even bass. Then again, that’s one of the great debates in fishing. Do you hang out in an area where there should be fish and wait for them to cycle back to that area or do you move to another spot?

Clean and lubricate gear, organize tackle including rounding up wayward soft plastics that appear to be everywhere in my house and shed, and work on my kayak. My kayak projects include converting my Livescope pole from fixed to articulated, streamlining me electrical wiring and components, reducing weight, and coming up with a better system and solution to take tournament submission photos.

When you tournament fish, speed is a big deal if your pre fishing spots don’t pan out. A three mile run will take me a full hour in my AP 120, whereas it would take me only 20-30 minutes with a kayak using an NK 300 or other rear drive motors. That’s an extra 30-40 minutes of fishing in an 8 hour tournament day. The other option is to get back to the ramp, load up, and drive to a new ramp. That can take a chunk of time as well. Tournaments limit kayaks to one motor only.

I was. But I really enjoy kayak fishing and my plan for 2025 is to do a lot of tournaments. Things are a bit up in the air now as the Bassmaster schedule won’t be released until the 10th. I may also have some life changes coming up that could have me fishing the SC Kayak Bass Nation trail instead of the GA trail.

Adding the winch to my trailer really saves time getting off of the water. Like you, I have a kayak cover so my tools, Livescope, and crate stay on the kayak. But I do remove my graphs after fishing. I use T-bolts to mount them on my captain’s bridge. I do this because when I travel and stay in hotels I don’t want to risk them being stolen. When I leave my house or the hotel, all of my battery connections are in place. When I get to the ramp, the storage space in my Bronco is set organized in the order I need to set things up. I don’t have to go digging for anything. If I’m fishing for fun I will set up at the ramp. If I’m fishing a tournament, everything but my rods is set up at the hotel. But no matter how you slice it, it does take a decent amount of time to set up and tear down. The flip side is that while doing that I get to meet a lot of people as they come up, admire my setup, and ask a lot of questions. It’s great to introduce people to kayak angling.

That Bonafide XTR 130 is looking better and better. It looks like I could pair that with an NK 300 motor for about $3200. I can probably get that much for my AP120. The biggest issue I see is losing spot lock. I use spot lock a lot. The trade off is speed. I never pull the trigger on things like this without a lot of thought. We’ll see what happens six months from now.

It’s only a pain if you’re like me and when you stay at a hotel you pull the black box from the hatch. That’s where Velcro comes in handy. I also have the Fishing Specialties transducer pole. The drawback with this mount is that it’s a fixed mount. The transducer and mount adds considerable drag and slows me down when I make a speed run. I can remove it quickly, but then it takes up my deck space. There are also times when I am moving slow and fishing amidst stump fields and I will pull the FFS mount. That’s where the deck gets crowded landing a fish with that sitting on the deck. If I don’t pull it, I risk breaking it off. The Fishing Specialties mount uses nylon bolts that are designed to shear if you hit something. Be sure to keep spare nylon bolts on board. More than once I have sheared them in the middle of fishing. I do have a solution to that. I bought some RAM mounts to fashion an articulated arm so I can swing it onto the gunnel. I’ll post pictures after I set it up and do a test run. My new solution also includes the use of nylon bolts. When I get to the launch it takes me 20 minutes or so to set up. That includes affixing my Garmin and Humminbird units to my captain’s bridge, pulling rods out of rod sleeves and loading the rods on the kayak, mounting the motor, affix my cooler, etc. My Livescope is already rigged with the transducer pole laying on the deck.

I’m not much of a drinker, but between the cold weather and some continued stress at work I thought it might be nice to occasionally relax with a drink and sit in front of the fireplace in the evening. I listen to Mike Rowe’s podcast and he talks about his Knobel Whiskey but I couldn’t find it in my area. I settled for a Knob Creek 9, which I found pleasant drinking it neat. I finished that off tonight, and with cold weather moving in it’s time to grab another bottle of something. I don’t think I could appreciate a $200 or $300 bottle of anything, so I’ll stick with something inexpensive. If I still can’t find Knobel, next up is Uncle Nearest 1856 or Four Roses single barrel.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. As for me, I have chosen to work a 16 hour day so me staff can spend the day with their families. And speaking of work, I may have an announcement next month. Fingers crossed. Update: The hotel is quiet with everyone out for dinner. The hotel was empty - or so I thought. I heard a rustling- it was the Bait Monkey! Not long after that, my wallet was much lighter.

TD’s should not fish the trails they oversee. If this is a national trail like Bass Nation I would report it to the national organization.

GPS data in the submission photo verifies the location If they are using something like TourneyX, that stuff is plotted out on maps for the admins. The GPS data is embedded in the photo.

During my Lake Fork tournament the other week I had an emergency beaching of my kayak and had to run into the woods. I forgot to pack my emergency TP, so thank goodness it’s the fall and nature’s TP was covering the ground.

Winter is here, and while I will still be able to fish, my primary goal this off season is to improve the fishability of my Old Town Autopilot 120. More Speed The top speed of the Autopilot is around 4.3 mph when running full throttle. But the drawback is that at full throttle it goes through the battery quickly. I run a 100 Ah battery for my trolling motor, and at full speed it will draw down that battery in two hours. Of course, no one fished WOT all day long, but I do worry about getting stranded out there. That's why one of the batteries I use for electronics is 100Ah so I can use it as a backup. When I make a run to another spot, my speed setting is 8/10 and depending upon the wind and current my speed is between 2.8 mph and 3.5 mph. My goal is to get the top level speed closer to 4 mph by shedding some weight on the kayak. The problem is that each of these 100 AH batteries is 22 pounds and that weight reduces speed. I also have two 18Ah batteries on board that power a Humminbird unit and my camera. Each of those batteries weight 4.3 pounds, so my total battery weight is about 53 pounds. I'm going to replace the 100 Ah battery that I use for Livescope with a 26 Ah battery that weighs only 9 pounds, shedding 22 pounds. All of my electronics will run off of that 36 Ah battery. The next part of shedding weight is packing lighter when it comes to tackle. I could probably easily cut about 10 pounds in soft plastics and baits. If I need something I'll have to do without or head back to my truck where I store extra baits in a bin. If I can personally shed another 20 pounds by spring that will help as well. I thought about changing the prop with the RC airplane prop that some people are using, but doing so voids my warranty and it won't handle the weeds I encounter. I also fish in some areas with lots of flooded timber and I think would end up breaking off. Livescope Mount Issues The Fishing Specialties Livescope mount that is a nice product, but it's a fixed mount. When I'm in on the go dicey areas like rocks and flooded timber or when I'm making a speed run somewhere I have to unclip the arm and lay it down on my deck. It's not a huge deal, but it does get annoying. So the other day I ordered some Ram ball mounts and plates. The goal is to have one of the balls on the rail connected to a short arm Ram mount that connects to an adapter plate attached to the Fishing Specialties plate. If this works the way it should, it will turn my mount into an articulating arm so the mount can be stowed on the rail. Wiring My wiring got a little sloppy as I added more and more items. It's time to clean all of that up with wiring sleeves and harnesses. Storage and Organization Someday a kayak manufacturer is going to add deck storage so anglers don't have to turn around and reach into their storage crates. Bonafide has done a bit of that with the XTR 130. I do keep 4 tackle storage boxes in the space next to my seat, but I need a little more. I'm looking at adding a Yak Attack TracPak up front for additional storage. I'm also thinking about adding a YakAttack Sidestage system for horizontal rod storage. I thought about wrapping my kayak, but I'll save that for another time. So, what items are you planning on upgrading or changing with your kayak this winter?

When you buy a kayak, you need to think about what you will most likely want 2-3 years from now. My first kayak was a pedal drive and a year later I wanted to attach a motor to it but found out that the weight of it would eventually cause problems with my hull. I still have that kayak, but I also bought an Autopilot. So your first question is paddle, pedal, or motor for your baseline kayak and where do you see yourself in a few years? Other considerations: 1. Storage. Crate storage, cooler storage, dry bag storage, spare parts storage, and rod holders come into play here. 2. Weight capacity, especially adding a battery or two. Your baits and tackle, especially soft plastics, add more weight than you think. Adding a cooler and drinks also adds a lot of weight. 3. Wiring. You may start with a simple fish finder, but later you may want to add FFS, lights, USB ports, cameras, etc. Are there spaces for batteries or battery boxes? How accessible is the hull to run wires? 4. Mounting options. Not all rail mounts are created equal. Will you need extra rod holders, electronics, a phone mount, over the rail transducer arm, etc.? Are there enough rail mounts and are they in places that will not interfere with your ability to fish or land fish? 5. Transducer mounting. Can the transducer be mounted on the hull or is a transducer arm required? 6. Transport. Car top, truck bed, or trailer? The more stuff you add, the more space you need. If you're older, car topping gets less and less fun. So does trailering unless you do what I did and add a winch. 7. Will you be fishing strictly for fun or do you eventually plan to enter tournaments (even local tournaments)? 8. Sit, stand, or both? If you plan to stand, you had better have either great balance or a very stable kayak. 9. If you eventually want a motor, do you want speed or spot lock? I love my Autopilot with spot lock, but I'm limited to about 3.5 mph with my load out. I see guys with rear mount motors blowing by me at twice that speed. What I'm getting at now is that what you think is a good kayak right now might not be a good kayak in a year or two. If I was buying a kayak today I would buy the new Bonafide XTR 130 and build out from there. Well, maybe night. I might buy a pedal drive Hobie and then add a motor to it. But if you're fishing is only going to consist of smaller waters, Bonafide makes great pedal and paddle kayaks. If you're more budget conscious and looking for a pedal drive, to this day I still love my Seastream Angler 120 pedal drive kayak. I've used it on small waters and big lakes. The only time I use it now is if there is a river tournament that doesn't have a lake option because I don't want to ruin my Autopilot.