dickenscpa

I'm left handed but I have some nerve damage in the left. So I have to lip the bass with the left hand now because I now have the dexterity in the right only to remove a hook by hand or with pliers. But I have to wear a glove on the left hand because otherwise I don't really know how hard I'm gripping so it saves the fish. Back to MLF and landing penalties. I used to think the penalties and rules were the fishermen and the organization really caring about the wellbeing of the fish. Now I think it's just horse and pony show window dressing. It's something that makes them a little different to other tours. First off if it was really all about the bass their Tackle Warehouse tour would be weigh/release and best 5. Also, I follow quite a few of the MLF'ers on their YouTube channel and they flip and toss bass all around. Hit the carpet and whole 9 yards when they practice or doing other things. So apparently to them it's just a rule they must follow when competing and on their time it's back to flipping and tossing.

Does anyone have some decent experience with the Yakima Topwater? I'm fishing with 8 rods and although the Hobie has on board storage that's strappable - 1) Don't feel comfortable stopping and eating with them so easily accessible and 2) You really have to do the rod socks and reel covers to keep them in good shape. The Yakima Topwater does hold 8 rods but they are separated and sit on foam. I'm also looking to shave some time when I finish fishing and have to load up. It's becoming a pain getting back and sleeving and reel covering all of them and putting them in the Hobie tubes. One of the reasons I left the boating world was it was becoming a hassle. In my studies the only real negative I've seen are the springs on the hatch. I've done the Rod Pod in 6 and 8" and not really a fan because you have to sleeve and protect the reels in those too. Plus I sold my previous trailer with the rod pod on it and now even if I wanted to do another, finding 8" PVC much less PVC that I can afford is impossible. It's going for $356 plus 9.25% sales tax then the Reese cover is $179 plus tax. Might as well buy an already made.

I second, third or quadruple the fish grip lashed to one side of the kayak. A donkey leash is fine too. I chose the fish grips for those times that multi trebled lures are stuck all over and I don't feel comfortable or can't get a thumb in there. I've never had one get off and they can get some air and they seem to calm down tremendously and not flop so bad on the Ketch board.

Me and my buddy went fishing this past Wednesday as well and I was fishing along and thought about the jerk and bend in my rod every time I kicked those pedals and I just busted out laughing out of the blue. It was like a cheesy sitcom or something. Man I thought I had a monster on the line. LOL! My buddy asked "What in the world got you tickled?" We both had a good laugh over it.

I just went thru this same thing a few weeks back. I bought one of those extended hitches a few weeks ago that has an extra receiver on top of it for bike racks when you're towing something else. I bought it to use the top one and extend it out a bit for a Boondox bed extender and raise it a smidge. I was guilty of leaving my previous hitch in year 'round as well. When I went to take the old hitch off, my locking pin was seized up tight as a drum. I soaked it, torched it and called the Pope but wound up cutting it off as well. Mine had the rubber cover on it as well and I never thought about it corroding and seizing. I went back to the ole faithful pin and cotter pin. I met a buddy one time at Kroger which is open 24hrs and we left my truck there in a fairly crowded parking lot and took his to a hockey game. When we got back around 10ish my whole receiver and everything had been disassembled and removed right there in the parking lot.

When my wife sets the table for dinner, my fork has corks on the end of it. LOL! What's odd is in all my years of fishing I guess somewhere down the line I may have snagged some clothing but apparently it was uneventful 'cause I don't remember it. I do remember getting a hook or two snagged in the carpet of the boat, but never in ME. Much less twice in one day.

I am just outside of Nashville

My buddy has a strange job. He is only off Sunday and Wednesday. I'm self employed, tax season over so after Church on Sunday and on Wednesdays we fish. So we go yesterday evening and it was like a comedy of errors. After each incident I thought, "Well it can't get weirder than this." I learned not to think that anymore. Right off the bat I see a piece of wood I wanted to throw at and bang, I get hit. I net the fish and bring it into the kayak and it's about a 12" bass with a snake wrapped around it. I'm not afraid of snakes but my buddy is a jelly mess around them. I did get bit by a western diamond back in January and noticed I'm a bit more leery than say 5 months ago. I do have one of those rubbery nets that hooks aren't supposed to catch in but my hook was entwined in the net. I didn't think I'd EVER get the fish and snake outta the boat. Next I see fish popping everywhere on bait in 4-5' of water. My crankin' rod had a deep diver on it and I wanted to switch to a shallower bait. I have a Hobie PA and the rod was laying on my right side in the rod tube. I reach down and some how one of the trebles embedded on top and back of my pinky nail under the skin. Would not budge. Couldn't lift the rod any higher and my pliers were on my right side - and it hurt. Had to peddle about 250 yds to the bank and my buddy had to pull it out. He gets it out and there was a fair amount of blood. It made him sick. I was fine until he started spewing. When he started spewing, I started spewing. I had some carbonated water and we were both ok after a bit. So we go back to fishing and I get out my shallow crankbait and a treble gets caught in my glove. I'm pulling, cutting, using pliers and it comes loose and pops and flies toward me and goes thru my shirt and gets stuck just under my right pec. I holler at my best friend again and he tells me I'm on my own with this one. Not as deep and not as much blood and its out. It's just I had a PFG fishing shirt on that was solid white and my wife bought it for me. It now has a small hole and a red stain that may or may not come out. So after I get it tied on I throw it over the side. Apparently it sinks and I'm just floating around putting stuff up and reorganizing. I realize I'm drifting too shallow and kick the fins a time or two. Notice my rod bows up hard. I thought FISH ON! I'm kicking the fins to beat the band and fighting this fish with everything I got. Then realized I'd caught a 230 pounder sitting in a plastic tub. I'd drifted over the crank and got my line caught in my drive. Now the one thing right - the water around me is like chocolate milk year 'round. I've never had the luxury of "sight fishing." We're heading back to the ramp ready to go eat. On my left I see a big mama on bed. Drop the power pole and stand and cast a t-rigged baby brush hog over there. Rod loads and I reel her in. First fish in my 50 years I saw and casted to. 3lbs is a BIG fish in this area and when I weighed her she was 5.14lbs. My PB is 6.08lbs in the same lake and that was 10 years ago so it was the biggest fish I've caught in a long time. I guess the moral of the story is I hope I don't have to go thru all of that again to catch a decent fish.

The biggest reward is sleeping well at night knowing you did the right thing.

I rode Harleys for years up until last May. Before they had true cruise control there was a tension knob on the throttle side and when you hit your speed you could tension the knob down to keep the throttle in that position. I always felt that was an insane contraption. Unlike true cruise you would go dangerously slow up hills and dangerously fast downhill. Also, unlike true cruise a small flick of the brake doesn't cancel it out. You have to manually unscrew that knob. I can't tell you how many rides I've been on when an emergency stop was needed and smoke would be coming off the brakes as riders would brake but the throttle would still be sending gas. I would never "lock" a throttle on anything. I wouldn't even want cruise on a boat, no brakes. LOL!

I was a co-angler ONE time and that was in 1997 and to this day I'm terrified of speed on the water. I have a boat in the garage that hadn't got wet and sold it and fell in love with kayak tournaments. My boater was running wide open with a kill switch on his belt loop and no pfd. I had mine on. He hit something and the boat stopped in its tracks. We were both thrown from the boat. He was knocked out and sinking. I'm not a small guy but he wasn't either. Somehow I got him in the boat. As strong as a swimmer as I am, after getting him in the boat I was toast. I could BARELY move. For the life of me I could not get in the boat. I hand walked to the back of the boat to ride the trim up onto the deck. Motor and a chunk of transom was gone. We were out in the middle of nowhere in a river system with current and shore was barely visible on one side. I knew I couldn't make it. It was all I could do to keep my arms up high enough to hang on to the boat. There was a brief moment of smoke from the accident and luckily someone saw it and reported it and they came and saved us. It was local wildlife officers. To this day I do a number of wildlife officer's tax returns for free and get wildlife tags on my truck each year because every penny over normal tags goes directly to them. It's just so important to wear that pfd and have the kill switch connected to it. You just can't predict what could happen. Would a hot foot prevent the boat screaming around you in circles? I've never had a hot foot but my thinking is you put it in gear and give it gas via the foot pedal. If you get thrown from the boat, it's in gear but no gas so it should just idle in a circle. Or am I wrong about how hot foot works?

I watched a video just last week that absolutely open my eyes to sidescan and made a ton of difference, it may have been Intuitive Angler or something like that. I would see a stump sticking barely above the water out in the distance and wondered why it didn't show up on sidescan. Apparently say you're in 5' deep water. That black water column is what's straight down from your transducer. Sure enough if I'm in 5' deep water, the black is 5' left and 5' right. When I go deeper or shallower that black curves and gets wider or narrower. I'm a shallow water guy so I have my range set at 20' to get a better picture. So at 20' range if I'm in 5' water I'm seeing 15' on each side. That had completely flown over my head. So that's why I didn't see a stump at 18' for example. The other thing I noticed is depending on which I looked at first between side and down - one would be crystal clear and the second one blown out. I could pull up only down or only side and they'd be beautiful. Both and one was murky. I had both set on the highest frequency. He said put one on the higher and one on the lower. One frequency gives more range but a slightly less detailed pic. The other gives less range but a better pic. Mismatch them and both are clear. So since I'm mostly a shallow water guy I put the down on the lower frequency and side on the higher. For most of you this is probably fishfinder 101 and you're thinking, uh yeah dummy. But I was a foul ball in tall weeds. I have an 8' Power Pole I put blue painter's tape in 1' increments to measure general distance left and right plus set my keel offset to know exact depth and he was right - at least for my unit.

I've said it 1000 times and maybe 980 times on this site - I'm a really, really good swimmer. But when I swim I get into the water on MY terms. When I'm in a vessel, there's about a 100% chance if I leave that boat or kayak it's not on my terms. If I hit my head and get knocked out I want to float and at least have a chance. A month before I got into kayaking in Sept 2019 I bought an autoinflate and decided to start wearing a pfd on my boat full time. I was wearing it on the kayak when I started kayaking. When Hook1 went out of business their stuff hit 75% off. Those brand new NRS pfds were 75% off. I bought all four of us brand new top-o-the-line NRS vests for pennies. On a whim I went out to the pool and just rolled over the side and went limp in my auto vest. It didn't inflate. The NRS brought me back up and face up. I decided to go with the NRS all the time. At first it was more bulky and kinda bothered me but now I've gotten used to the capacity of those pockets and feel awkward in the auto inflate. I don't want to be "that guy" and start an auto vest argument but I do feel a bit more secure with a sure thing. I did buy a four pack of CO2 refills for the auto and burned two of them testing and both the refills inflated and worked flawlessly. I'm not so sure I could swim to safety with it on though.

Being 100% transparent when it comes to sidescan I just wanted it because I wanted it. I wasn't good enough to use it to it's fullest and although I've gotten better with it and learned more I am FAR from an expert with it or even really super efficient. However, one tournament in 2021 I was skunking the place up in a one day Saturday tournament and hadn't had sidescan for very long. I was cruising down a bank about 10-15' off the bank and I'd cruised down this way a 1000 times at least. 10' is about as close as I can get due to structure, limbs, overhang, etc. First day passing with sidescan I saw a car tire about 2-3' off the bank and about 2-3' deep. I didn't see any "white rice" specs to know fish were there but figured a good place for fish to be. I caught 5 off that tire and three were really good fish. I didn't win but went from skunkville to 8th place and got a $50 gift certificate for a $35 entry fee. LOL!

I used the old cheap monochromatic cheapie that came on my boat up until Aug 2019. I sprung to buy the Garmin Striker 4 to put up on the front of the boat and mounted the transducer on my trolling motor. With my eyes the 4" screen was a bit rough because I always stood on the front deck. However it being in color REALLY helped me start learning how these things work. I moved to a kayak in Sept 2019 and I bought the Garmin Striker 5 with downscan. Sitting in the kayak and having the screen fairly close helped a ton. I upgraded to the 9" so I had room to run three things at a time and actually see and I wanted sidescan. I usually run sidescan all across the top and bottom left is map and bottom right is downscan. I have a Hobie PA and to be honest 9" is about the biggest screen I can go with and it not be in my way. I never sold the 5" Garmin, I couldn't have sold it for enough to even fool with, but if I fish a tournament on a body of water I'm not familiar with I'll put it on the kayak and run map only on it and use the 9" for side and downscan only. When I fish a familiar waters though I take it off, just in my way. When I do hook up the 5", the 9" and 5" share waypoints and maps immediately so no loss there. I didn't go with the 93uvh whatever because the Striker series are EXTREMELY user friendly and a good pic, plus the likelyhood of me adding Panoptix was pretty much slim to none. My best friend put a $1500 Lowrance on his Hobie and he doesn't even charge the battery or put it on his boat anymore. The setup befuzzled both of us and we couldn't figure it out. The Strikers have really good pic and you can literally hook it up and use the canned defaults and be just fine.

I "think" that one pfd per person only has to be worn if in a boat and the motor is running. Not 100% sure on that or the laws pertaining to kids. In a KBF tourney it has to be on at all times. I wasn't sure if it was mandatory but my kids were ALWAYS gonna have theirs on and whether I'm in a kayak tournament or not I wear mine. Me, wife and two kids now have our own kayaks and if we go out there's no discussion. PFDs at all times. I rode Harleys up until about 11 mos ago since 1999. In TN we have a helmet law. 35 miles north from us in KY, no helmet required. I'd ride with a group and as soon as we crossed that state line we'd pull over and half of them stowed their helmet. I guess they thought pavement was softer 35 miles north.

When I read your post the first thing that came to mind was compression and leakdown. If you check the transom is secure and also if it's secure look to see if it has been repaired. There's different degrees of repair work depending on who did it. A lot of repairs look good on the lot and three months later start falling apart. Outside of making sure you have a good solid transom, no waterlogged foam and you can tell by looking if it has excess water coming that has to be drained after each trip by the staining - most other nitpicky things on the boat are DIY stuff. Personally I wouldn't be super concerned about the graphs and TM on a 5-10 yr old boat because I'd most likely switch them out anyway. My main concern would be that motor. I'd rather pay for an extra plane ticket and take someone with me that knew motors than take a risk on getting a bad motor. Around here you can have a $50k boat and if the motor goes you might as well buy another engine. A new Merc 150 4 stroke is about $15-16k. Where I'm at a super nice boat with no motor you can't hardly give it away. If you do sell it you took a major hit. It's hard to even get your hands on a new motor right now anyway.

I've lost quite a bit of sod on the fairway up top, so a hat is a must for me. Nothing looks worse than a bald head peeling from a sunburn. LOL!

The whole "kayak cart" deal is a sore subject for me. I've bought a cheap $35 cart from Academy, a not so cheap c-tug, expensive Wilderness Kayak cart and the way overpriced Hobie Cart. I don't really care for carts I have to strap down. The Hobie cart thru the reinforced scuppers is awesome as you pull it part way off the trailer, pop in the cart and head to the ramp. Lift the back in, cart falls out and you can walk them back to the truck to store or stick'em on the back of the kayak and fish. Problem comes to light when you're done fishing and getting out of the water. You don't have to completely unload the boat but you have to significantly unload a few things or when you turn it on it's side your crap will be all over the ramp. I know there are a few DIY remedies for this but none of them appeal to me. The Boonedox Landing gear looks like a gift from the gods on paper but a large majority of the people who fish tournaments on our trail who have them also have a crack problem. (I just now realized that last sentence is hilarious and I didn't mean for it to be, but I'm leaving it. LOL!) I've just found the easiest solution for me is I have a kayak specific trailer, like a boat or skidoo trailer is meant to back into the water. However I don't back mine in the water. I get the rubber as close to water as I can and the hubs stay bone dry. I slide it off and the rear of the kayak hits water and then I just lift the front and she comes right off. I leave about half the yak on the ramp and the back floating, park the truck and reverse it when I leave.

Caveat on the front end, I'm a very avid cyclist who when not in tax season will do 130-150 miles a week on a bicycle and I try to do two centuries a year. With that said I have had a Hobie PA for a year the 30th of this month. LOVE everything about it and wouldn't go back - however a casual pump for me is 3-3.2 mph. I could probably keep that pace straight up for hours without a break and probably not even think about it. Now here's the weird part, if I pump that thing with all I got like I owe someone child support and they're chasing me - it's all I can do to get to 4 mph and that's peak. I'll hover in that 3.8 or 3.9 and might hit a 4.0 peak for a split second. My kayak before this was a Perception Pescador Pilot 12.0. It was a pedal style like a bicycle and I cruised in that thing at 4.2 without even thinking about it. I could get on it a bit and hit 6 mph easy and sustain that if I needed to. I could've went faster than 6 but I don't remember consciously trying and recoding that in my head so I'm not going to lie and make something up. Of course there's a flip side to everything. I had that kayak 8 mos and had the drive warrantied 3 times and had five warranty claims overall.

I took it back to return it at the shop a day or so later. No muss no fuss - however, they had just put together a kayak trailer for a customer and that customer decided they didn't want it anymore. I have a Harbor Freight trailer I converted to a kayak trailer but would prefer to use that trailer to carry my ATV on hunting. So I bought the kayak trailer.

I’ve had my Boonedox TBone for two days today and I’m not liking it. For one the two bolts holding those two plastic end pieces on the crossbar were stripped right out of the box. They are 5/16 bolts and luckily I had a 3/8 tap and replaced with 3/8 bolts. It’s been in my hitch maybe 20 minutes and never on the road and I sprung for the Boonedox pads for the crossbar but half the paint on the thing is now gone. I don’t know if I got a bad one or what but this is the floppiest thing I’ve ever owned. I installed eye bolts in place of the stripped out stock bolts and ran straps from there to my hitch where the safety chains go and another set from the eye bolts to the upper tie downs in my truck bed. This thing still has 6-8” of play up/down on the crossbar. I can’t get my Hobie PA in the truck. It’s slid off and landed in the driveway 4 times. It has a TON of slop in a 2” receiver. I bought a reducer down to 1 1/2” but it won’t fit in. Is this an item where I have to strip the kayak down to a shell to keep it from sliding off? If so I’ll stick with a trailer. I tournament fish and go out and prefish by myself a lot. I don’t have the luxury of a helper every trip and I I’m not stripping the whole thing down every time I load an unload every fishing trip. Maybe if the guides were bigger than 2 1/2” and not flimsy plastic the boat wouldn’t slip off. BTW, it’s not a weight thing getting it loaded. Without the extender I can load it onto my tailgate no problem, but my tailgate doesn’t move.

I like a kayak. I pulled my boat and stored it in the garage at my office. It hasn't got wet since I bought my first kayak in Sept 2019. I just kinda like having everything right there at arms reach like I'm in my own little cocoon. One thing in my kayak I never did in my boat is if the fish aren't biting I tool around and explore and really have a great time doing it. In my boat I'd pack up and leave. There have been times I've even pulled out and went to another ramp. If I ever pulled my boat out I was going home. I bought my wife and two kids kayaks and we all go during the warm water months. We tool around and explore, I fish and never get the "when are you coming home" text.

I'm in the middle of tax season and chained to my desk but my best friend just send me a pic of a green one from Music City Outdoors just because of the color. He had no idea I made these posts or was thinking of getting one. LOL! I told him to buy it and drop it off at the office I wanted it.

That green is my color and I'm about to do the same. I've driven trailers and pulled boats all my life but I still subscribe to the "extra set of axles, extra set of problems" mantra. I'm getting a little put out pulling my kayak trailer. We had out TN KBF season opener this past weekend and it was on a lake I'm really not familiar with and quite a drive actually. I'm trying to get to where I plan to launch by 5AM. I'm cruising down the interstate in the dark and notice a lot of people are honking at me. Couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Then it hit me, I'm pulling a trailer. So I pulled to the side and my rear strap broke somehow and the tail of my kayak was almost off the trailer. I've got plenty of truck bed and my Hobie slides in with my bed cover still in place. Plus parking and eating after fishing is much easier too.