Kayak Koz

Honestly, if you're in decent health whether it's fishing or anything else, if you don't think that this year is going to be your best year, what's the point?

Some baits provide a better sonar return than others. While you can see most big baits, it can be difficult to see some smaller baits. I think that the composition or coating of some baits helps provide a better return. That being said, some people are under the impression that you chuck your bait out there and it pops up on your FFS. But the FFS cone is actually narrow, so you really need your transducer lined up with where you cast and your Livescope settings need to be correct for the water conditions.

I've trolled with a crankbait on my kayak a few times when running to waypoints, but I've never caught anything. And because it's forbidden in tournament fishing, it really doesn't cross my mind to try it.

I see mentions here of casting accuracy and agree that's important. But another important part of casting is how you land the bait, especially when you want that bait to enter the water quietly and not spook the fish.

Well, if you had literal "hind sight" you wouldn't have run over the generator! 😁 (Sorry, couldn't resist)

If you have side scan, this is a good time to use it to find open pockets in the weeds. Bass will sit nearby and ambush whatever swims through that pocket.

Dissolve some No-Doz in water and pour it on the terminals. 😁

How do you like the ride with the bigger tires? One thing - be sure the tires are seated properly on the rim. With the first long trip I took I lost air pressure in one of the tires because of that. I love those tires, but they make the trailer a bit bouncier on bumpy roads. But they have been great otherwise. PS - I still haven't put my fenders back on despite the brackets you sent me! I promise I'll get to it the next stormy day off that keeps me from fishing!

Thanks. Tournament fishing limits us to one motor, and I prefer to have spot lock. But I'll admit I get jealous when I see those rear mount Torqeedos doubling my speed. An gas powered outboard would be insane, but I have seen people use them.

I thought about it a few times, but instead I chose to lose some weight and try and improve my balance. There are a lot of things that become more difficult as you get older, and as I found out, one of those is balance. For no, I wedge my feet against the gunnels. But I thought about adding some sot of foot strap. I thought about taking a rubber sandal (slide), cutting it in half by the arch of the foot, beveling it, then affixing securely it to the deck. That would hold my foot in place, even when setting the hook. My biggest fear when standing is setting the hook or missing the hookset and then tumbling into the water. My Blackpak has 6 rod holders and a clip for my Ketch board. My AP has two forward facing rod holders, but I took away one to mount my Sniper Marine FFS pole. The AP also has two rear facing rod holders, but I use one of those for my net. I used to carry 8 or 9 rods each outing, but now I keep it at 5 or 6. That's usually 5 baitcasters and one spinning rod. But if I'm going to a lake where I plan to drop shot or finesse fish I'll bring two spinning rods. I usually run snaps on two baitcasters so I can quickly change out things like spinnerbaits, bladed jigs, and crankbaits. With the others I'll tie on things like jigs or underspins that I plan to use most of the day. It all depends upon the lake.

Yesterday I headed to Tobesofkee and fished the Duck Pond area for the first time. That area is a bunch of fingers of twisty channels of shallow water. Most of the area was 1-3 feet deep. With that, there weren’t many boats around. I don’t think I felt a wake all morning. Earlier this week I made a change to my kayak, moving the captain’s bar with my graphs about 4 inches forward and even that little distance made a huge difference when standing and fishing as I could position my feet wider and achieve better balance. Anyway, I got on a pattern right away with the bass relating to wood. Not one bass in the grass all morning. And even though the water was calm, they were hitting a spinnerbait. I really wanted it to be a frog day, but other than a few swipes that bite never materialized. At one point I saw and heard big blow ups along shore in heavy mats and targeted that. I’d see the blow up, pitch out there, and then nothing. This went on for ten minutes with not a single bite despite all of the blow ups. It was then that I finally saw the fish that I was targeting. A carp. I laughed at myself and moved on. Overall it was a fun and relaxing day. I caught 8 or 9 in about four hours, though nothing was bigger than 2 pounds. Another highlight was getting my GoPro working again, although it required me to add yet another battery box and 12v battery so it had clean power and enough voltage to run.

I see that you’re in the SC Lowcountry. I lived on both Hilton Head and in Bluffton for decades and did a lot of bank fishing and had to contend with gators. Somewhere here on BR I posted some gator safety tips. Number one is keep your head on a swivel. Even then I’ve been stalked and chased and it’s no fun. Now I’m in GA and travel the country fishing in my kayak and ai seem to run across more gators than ever. BTW, if you get a chance to fish in Sun City Hilton Head there’s some great fishing and lots of big bass including double digit bass. You also have almost 400 lagoons to choose from in there.

Yes, it’s a barge out there. I haven’t pulled the trigger, but I have thought about selling my AP and getting a Native or an XTR with the new Garmin stern mount motor. I do like spot lock. In tournament fishing we are limited to one motor, so I can’t add another to my AP.

Very nice. Congratulations!

My bunks are the standard 6 foot bunks that came with the trailer. If you look at the photo above, they are fairly narrow. The bunks at the bow end are slightly narrower. The bunks bend and warp, and I think that longer bunks would inevitably make it harder to load. Occasionally my rod box gets some water in it, but it has drain holes. When I launch, the rod box is empty as I set up my full load out in the parking lot before launching. When I get back to the dock, I quickly get the kayak on the trailer, lock my winch, and don’t unload and pack anything until I’m back in the parking lot.

I made a slight change on my rig this afternoon by moving my captain's bridge a few more inches towards the bow to give me more deck space to stand. I may have to slightly change the angle of the Garmin's to improve the viewing angle. But this got me thinking. I do like to stand and fish, and while my kayak is stable, as I get older my balance is not as good. When I say that my kayak is stable, under normal conditions it's not going to roll over. But when I stand it feels wobbly out there, and when I set the hook while standing I feel like I may fall overboard. Heck, I've seen videos of angler's doing just that. So, that got me thinking. Someone should may a kayak with a foot strap on the deck, kind of like sliding your foot into a sandal. You would have that foot, say your left foot, forward on the deck under the strap and then hold your right foot back for balance. That strap holds you in when you set the hook or get rocked by waves and wakes, but would still be easy to disengage if needed. I had thought about the possibility of mounting a crossbar just above the deck that I could slide my foot under, but that would block my pedals from steering. Yes, there are expensive stand assist bars, but I don't need help standing up and they seem flimsy to lean against and I could still fall over backwards with a big hook set. I've tried bracing the sides of my feet against the gunnels, but that's not a great solution. I still feel like I'm going to fall overboard. I'm toying with shaving off the back half of an old Nike rubber sandal and gluing it to my deck, but I'm not sure it will hold or what would happen if I didn't like it. Aging and being balanced impaired is tough. I get jealous when I see Kristine Fisher jumping around her kayak deck or even standing on her seat and fishing.

I didn't use a net for a while, but a few things changed my mind. One of those is clearing a fish over the dual 9" Garmin's on the captain's bridge. But more important, one day I lost 3 fish in a tournament that flopped of my Ketch board. THREE in one tournament. Dang spotted bass all hopped up like they are on meth. So now I prop the net up along the left side when I go to measure and photo fish so chances are if they try and flop off they hit the net and bounce back on the deck.

Hmmmm.... The 100 Ah Lifepo batteries weigh 22 pounds each. The 18Ah battery weighs about 5 pounds. The Garmins weigh just under 5 pounds, then just under another 6 pounds for the FFS system. That's all about 60 pounds. I also stow little stuff like a headlamp, spare prop, prop pins, allen wrenches, screwdriver, and of course, toilet paper. When I head out I also bring a small, 12 can cooler. I've pared down my tackle, so let's day that with the crate that's another 20 pounds at most. The total weight capacity of the AP120 is 558 pounds, but when you subtract out the weight of the kayak and motor the usable weight is 406 pounds including me. So, I'm still definitely in the safe zone. But I will say that I do make every effort to pare down my tackle, especially the soft plastics hat really add up the weight. For me, they can also lead to a paralysis of analysis out on the water. I also used to bring 8 or 9 rods, but now it's a maximum of 6. My previous kayak was a Seastream Angler 120 pedal drive. I loved that thing. But it took a lot out of me in the brutal summer Georgia heat when I would pedal out 4 or 5 miles and have to get back at the end of the day.

I thought I'd share some photos and descriptions of my Old Town Autopilot 120 setup. Here's the hero photo on the trailer: Yes - that's three screens on there. But truth be told, the only time my Helix 7 is on there is when I want to run Lakemaster and SmartStrike. The only time I really do that is if it's a new lake or I'm fishing and area that's new to me. If my map study doesn't pay off, I can see where SmartStrike suggests. Running three graphs plus accessories draws a lot of power. The Garmin graphs are a UHD 93 SV on the right and a UHD2 93SV on the left. The sun visors on my UHD's are from Berley Pro. They absolutely make a huge difference out on the water, and the look cool, too! My goal was to network them via bluetooth or Wifi but I haven't been able to get that to work. So, the newer UHD2 unit runs Livescope and the older unit handles down imaging, side imaging, and mapping. I rarely use DI and SI, so it mostly stays on fishing charts. Sometimes I run a split screen with SI and maps when I'm running to waypoints. This photo also shows my Sniper Marine pole for FFS. I use the rod tube delete to mount it since putting it on the tracks places it too far forward for my reach. Also, the plastic Old Town tracks are kind of flimsy. The captain's bridge is from Dugout Bait and Tackle. It doesn't have tracks. You have to drill through the metal to mount your graphs. I like this mount as opposed to the track bar mount. It's very sturdy. At first I was worried the graphs. Speaking of power, I run three - yes three - batteries. Well, as of today I run three batteries. My motor runs of a 100AH Weize LifePo battery. In the tank well I have two battery boxes. The first is a bigger Newport box that contains another 100Ah Weize battery to run my graphs, black box, heading sensor, two red LED deck lights, my navigation lights, and a USB port. I could run all of this off of a 36Ah LifePo battery, but I like the added security of being able to swap out that second 100Ah battery if I happen to run down my trolling motor battery. I've actually done that twice now. That beats paddling this barge or asking for a tow. The reason I now have a second battery box with an 18Ah battery is that I found that my GoPro is very sensitive when it comes to receiving the proper power, even when I edit that setting in the firmware. It used to run off of the USB port I installed in my kayak until I added more electronics. So now I run it separately on an 18Ah Lifepo in a YakPower box with an external USB port. My crate is the 13" x 16' YakAttack Blackpack Pro . I have 6 rod holders on the BlackPack. One my kayak there are 4 built-in rod holders. But I use one for my net and one for the rod tube delete for my FFS Sniper Marine pole. Power for my accessories and graphs is run through an 8-port YakPower hub and the controls are mounted on the my right side inside the gunnel. I know that YakPower is a bit expensive and gets mixed reviews, but so far it's been good for me. The hub and my FFS black box are located in my hatch under the seat. There's not a lot of room in there and the molding of the hull makes it a pain, so I put a 1x3 board in there. Everything is held down with Velcro for easy removal. I did drill a hole in the top of the hatch cover to run my FFS cable and the power cable that runs to my Newport battery box in the tank well. One thing I added for comfort was strapping a gel cushion to the bottom of my seat. With it strapped under the seat it doesn't slide around all day. Another upgrade was changing out the power plug for the motor. The pins on the Old Town plug eventually bent and I would intermittently lose power. I was fishing a tournament on Lake Seminole on a windy day, and if you know Seminole it's almost all flooded timber, and the motor would cut out and I'd be bouncing off timber. After previously getting hung up on Timber at Lake Fork, I ditched that Seminole tournament for safety, went home, and changed the plug that I had sitting around but had not installed yet. This new plug is a twist and lock design. One word of caution - change out the plugs AFTER your warranty expires or you will void your warranty. Moving on to my Malone Ecolight trailer with bunks, you will see a few modifications. The first was adding a winch. This makes it a breeze to load back up on a busy ramp. The second upgrade was changing to the much larger 10" tires. The ride is a lot smoother, I get better gas mileage, and they are rated to 88 mph as opposed to the 60 mph rating of the stock tires. The other change I made was shifting over the cross rails so I could attach my Yakima rod box. Originally, I would put that rod box on the roof of my Bronco, but there were two main issues with that. The first is that it absolutely destroyed my gas mileage. I regularly travel 120 to 600 or more miles to fish, so fuel mileage is important. The second thing is that with the rod box on top of the Bronco I would have to bring a step stool to load and unload rods, and that was just a pain. Even with moving those cross rails, the entire width of my trailer is still behind my Bronco and not sticking out. I know a lot of kayak trailers have rod tubes and rod boxes on crossbar rails above the kayak, but I think that's a bad idea. Why? Because if you stand up your rods that means that you have to load them on your kayak AFTER you put your kayak in the water. So, you're either tying up the ramp or you have to lug them down to the dock after you park your vehicle. Although it's not in the photos, I do have the self draining scupper valves on the deck, in the tank well, and under my main battery box. I prefer these to the solid scupper plugs. But if you get in big waves and water is crashing over the deck, grab your pliers and pull a few of them out. They're great under normal conditions, but not when it's nautical out there and water is pouring over the bow. The navigation light strips and the deck lights are from YakPower. I also have a YakAttack VisiPole II for my flag and white safety light. My GoPro is mounted on a YakAttack Boomstick Pro. My fishing net is a ForeEverlast Generation 2 floating net. I used to strap a regular kayak paddle to my kayak, but eventually ditched that for an Attwood Emergency telescoping paddle. I have two Ketch boards, and recently switched out the smaller, yellow Ketch Karbonate for the larger, metal Ketch X board. The Karbonate is smaller and was a pain to lay across the gunnels when it was time to measure a catch. It clips to my BlackPack when needed, but once the tournament starts it's usually sitting on my deck. Anyway, that's the grand tour. Let me know if you have any questions other than, "Why didn't you just buy a bass boat?" 😄

I appreciate that, but I did mess up. I need to get the fish close to the boat before I go one handed and risk slacking the line. I got too excited and forgot that. Lesson learned. You're the writer here! But why not tell a story and try to keep people engaged? Then again, I suppose that I could have shortened the whole thing to "$#@&%" and got my point across 😀

After catching my 8.5 pound PB at Eufala last week, I was excited for my GA Bass Nation Kayak tournament there this week. It proved to be an interesting day. I live two hours from the ramp where I launch from, and launch time was 6:30 am (5:30 central) with first cast at 6:45 am. So that meant waking up at 3:15 in the morning to get showered, eat, pack food and drink, and hitch up my trailer. From the ramp I had a 45 minute run to my first waypoint (dang slow kayaks!), and in order to try and eke out an extra tenth of a miler or two per hour I pared down my gear. In particular, I left a lot of soft plastics and a few tackle trays at home. I also ditched my spinning gear and brought 6 baitcasters ready to go. I set up a T-rig rod for either Flux Gills or Senkos, a swim jig, a punching jig, a bladed jig rod, a spinnerbait rod, and a frog rod for a small hollow bodied frog popper. I had also planned to try a Teckel Sprinker frog on that rod. I've been having problems with my GoPro lately, and it seems to be a voltage issue. I never had that problem before running it off my 100Ah accessories battery. But then again, I'm running more things off that battery including Livescope, two UHD93 graphs, heading sensor, deck lights, bow lights, a USB port, and a Helix 7which I did not bring today. I did go into the firmware and tell it to ignore voltage warnings and it worked in my garage but not in the parking lot today when I was setting up. That's too bad, because it would have been great to get the footage today. I got to the lake and the ramp was packed. Last week there weren't a lot of boats there, but today there must have been 90. Luckily, most were on the already water, though I was 7th in line when I was ready. With that, I hit the water 8 minutes after our set launch time and with the long run that meant less time actually fishing. I was headed to the north fork of Cowikee Creek and there were only a few boats and no kayaks headed that way. Was I a genius or a sucker? About 1/4 mile from my first waypoint I saw bass blowing up along some grass mats. I can't tell you what kind of grass is what, but Eufala has 3 distinct aquatic shoreline grasses that I had seen before. With two of them, I never found bass. But where they were blowing up was similar to my first waypoint. Last week I caught my PB and some other bass on my frog popper, so that's what I dug out first. It was almost comical as the bass were crashing baits fish all around me, but I couldn't get them to bite on that frog, a spinnerbait, or a swim jig. So I decided to move on to my first waypoint. I was fishing that frog about 500 feet south of where I caught that PB last week when I got a blowup pulling it over some grass. My first problem was that I had made a fairly long cast to start with, because I had purposely casted beyond the mat I was targeting. So, when the fish hit, I had to do a bit more reeling than I would have liked. Remember, in a kayak you have very little leverage when you're seated and unlike when you're in a boat, a decent sized fish can pull your kayak around. Anyway, the fish hits, the rod bends a lot, and I know it's a good one. I set the hook and start bringing her in and she comes to the surface and she turns and goes under. She's big. Very big. I feel her go down, move towards me and slack the line, so I'm cranking to try and keep her pinned. I get tension back on the line and I'm guessing she's 50 feet away at this point. This is where I make a critical error that will haunt me for quite some time. I took my left hand off the rod and started to turn and reach back for my net that I keep in the rod holder behind and left of my seat. She turns down again but she can't go deep in shallow water, so she turns and once again heads towards my kayak. I feel the line slack. Again, I'm one handed on the rod with it in my right hand, and because it's RH retrieve I first need to transfer it back to my left hand to start cranking. Too late. I can't keep her pinned under the water and she breaches the surface big time. That is when I got a good look at her. From belly to dorsal she was wide. Wide like a fat woman on one of those electric scooters at Walmart wide. She had a big head and a big bucket mouth. And when she breached and slacked the line some more, that big bucket mouth was spitting my frog. Now, normally I'm not one to cuss, but I let out a string of F-bombs that I'm sure people could hear back at the ramp. She was a double digit for sure. I'd guess about 11-12 pounds. She made that 8.5 I caught last week look like bait. I was crushed. What I should have done was fight the fish longer, tire it out, bring it to the boat, and then net it. Dumb move on my part. That was obviously frustrating, but so was the rest of the day. I only landed two fish and finished in the middle of the pack. But what was frustrating is that I was around bass all day. I had Livescope fired up for maybe 10 minutes all day. Most of the day I had that graph shut off. Bass swiped at my frog and missed. They grabbed the trailers on my spinnerbaits but not the hooks. I took of the trailers and got nothing. Maybe some of these were male bass guarding nests. But I had the right area of the lake with lots of bass around and just couldn't land them. And in the parking lot I remembered I had brought a Teckel but forgot to use it on the lake. Maybe that's better. It probably would have just attracted the little nuisance gators. In that stretch where I fished I heard some distinct baby gator noises coming from the woods area and at one point two very, very loud and long wood boats came ripping through there with some Bubbas who stopped long enough to brag to each other how they were running over alligators. Anyway, after their loud rumbles, big old 11 foot mamma came out and she kept chasing me out of that area for a lot of the rest of the day. She hung out in that narrow channel then would come towards me if I stopped to fish. It's funny, because I never saw anyone else fish that stretch where I fished. The all fish the opposite side of that creek channel. On the day, the winner tallied only 88", and only 9 anglers caught a limit. Biggest fish landed was under 21". I talked to a bunch of boaters out there including those in a HS tournament and no one was catching anything. I guess I should be happy with the two I caught. I still had fun out there, but losing that DD will haunt me for a while. But I do like Eufala and I'm going to head out there again sometime, even if it is a 2 hour drive. I'm supposed to fish a tournament at Guntersville next week, but I think I'm going to pass. It's a 5 hour drive to get out there and work is too busy for me to take time off. Initially I was supposed to be at Caddo next week for the Bassmaster event, but again, I'm too busy to take an extra day for Guntersville so there's no way I can take a week off for Caddo. That's a long day with 10 hours of driving and 5 hours of fishing. I think I'll pass and just fish the Bassmaster Kayak event at Santee Copper next month. But I'll spend the week there and practice before the tournament. If anyone else is going to fish that event, let me know and maybe we can share an AirBnb.

It wouldn't surprise me. Personally, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't even care if no one downloads or streams the songs I'm going to publish. I think they're great. It's mostly high energy music that really gets me pumped up on the way to the ramp or on the way to work. For me, there's quite a bit of work as I come up with most of the lyrics. Then there's all of the vocal settings, style settings, instrument choice and style, and a host of other options. I can't even begin to count the number of rewrites and iterations of each song to get it to where I want it. I would also bet that major artists are also using AI in music creation. It's a fascinating tool. If I didn't tell people my songs used AI for the vocals and aided in production I don't think they would evert know.

Last two of the album: Shoulda Bought a Bass Boat 100 Inches or Bust (title might change Five Big Bites) Everything should be on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, etc. within the next month.

I have tools that allow me to customize all aspects of the voice. This allows me to come up with the tone, modulation, style, etc. that I’m looking for as a whole and each line and section of the song (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc.). The more I get into it the more I learn.

I'm going to add one more song that was inspired by someone right here on BR. The premise is "You shoulda bought a bass boat!"