So after a long hiatus I’m back to my blog. Originally I thought I would blog MORE during the winter when I’m sitting on my butt and the fish are hiding away in freezing cold water under inches of ice. Instead I found my honey-do list quite long this year and my job really busy.  Things are slowing down and fishing is starting up… so time to talk fishing!

I want to focus on changes I am making for the coming season.  I bombed in the tournaments last year.  I know we all have our off years but I took time this winter to reevaluate my tactics for the coming tournaments and for non-tournament fishing. I had two great seasons prior to last year and then things fell apart. And I think I know why….

Novelties. I spent too much time trying weird unproven tactics that I read about on websites and in fishing magazines. While I intend to be innovative this year and keep changing things up to throw the fish off their game… I am going to generally fish with more tried and true tactics. This year for freshwater:  I plan on spending a lot of time with jerkbaits (hard and soft) , jigs, soft plastics (texas rigged, Carolina rigged, weightless, wacky rig and drop shot) , crankbaits (one of my absolute favorite lures and I want to use them a lot this season), spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, swimbaits and tubes.  I plan on wasting less time on frogs, which are time wasters and terribly frustrating in a tournament (but fun outside a tournament), shaky head unless I find a spot that begs for it, weird creature baits which seem to never get hit regardless of what the magazine articles say and numerous other tactics which fail me in tournaments.

Attractant. I couldn’t find my favorite attractant last season so I opted for a different brand. I won’t make that mistake again. I’m convinced my favorite brand makes a difference on how long the fish holds onto the bait. And yes I’m not going to tell you what it is. Sorry. Just keep an eye on me and you’ll spot the stuff I’m smearing on my lures. Good luck with that.

 Obsession with standing up. I thought standing while fishing was the best thing since kayak fishing. I’m convinced that’s not the case. There are times it is helpful without question. But I was more focused on not falling in the water and looking cool as I’m stand-up-paddling than I was on catching fish. I believe you lose some of your stealth standing up. Stealth is what kayak fishing is all about! The only time I felt an advantage standing was sight fishing. This is useful during the spawn but most of the time its more trouble than it’s worth in a kayak. With my new Hobie Outback my butt is staying firmly planted in the seat!

Fishing speed. I know I fished WAY too fast last year.  While compensating for the above mentioned failures I was moving my lures too quickly. Especially my soft plastics. This year I am forcing myself to slow down. Patience pays off in fishing.  I do know I am a power fisherman and need to tailor to that but when I am not using power fishing techniques I have to watch my speed.

Stress. The more I failed last season the more I tried too hard to compensate. This led to fishing too quickly and changing lures too frequently. I wanted to figure out the pattern without putting in the time. This is going to be the hardest change this season. It’s not a gear issue or a tactic but a mental one. But I’m determined to do it.

My next post will still be on changes but more gear centered and will hit on saltwater as well. Check back in soon!

This post is a little overdue as things have been in transition around here. I ran into a snag with the NuCanoe Frontier. Not a big deal but I did end up having to change my ride. I'll spare you the details. If you really want to know I'll tell you over a beer sometime. I ended up replacing my Frontier with a Hobie Outback. I'm super excited about this yak. Many of my friends own Hobies and they love them. For those who don't know, most Hobies are powered by a Mirage Drive. This is a pedal driven contraption that moves you forward with 2 flippers sticking out of your hull where your feet are. They are fast, maneuverable and best of all... keep your hands free for fishing. No more messing with a paddle. You can also hold position and fish in current which is very helpful when trying to fish structure in saltwater, like a bridge for instance. This should be great on the Delaware Bay as the tide can really move there. Time to start rigging so I can get to fishing Thanksgiving weekend!

As far as fishing reports.... fishing sucks right now. This has been a lousy fall. Freshwater has just turned off. I fished a tournament with my friend Layne on his boat last weekend. Something like 17 boats with 2 guys per boat for 6.5 hours and 5 bass made it on the board. Layne and I each caught a pickerel. Not a single bass in 6.5 hours! I've been hearing this from others as well.

Saltwater fishing is a mess since Hurricane Sandy came through. The back bays are so muddy that the fishing has slowed down terribly. Many are just going to call it a year since they don't know how long until the water clears up. I've got my fingers crossed that maybe we can salvage a few weeks before things get too cold. One can hope!

Strange late season

I was going to make this post about my setup on my Frontier, but have decided to report on this strange late season instead as there are developments with my kayak at the moment. We can talk about that later.

So the fishing has been odd this year. I caught a ton of bass in February (in the future when I say bass, I mean largemouth bass. I'll specify when I'm talking about stripers or smallmouth.) It was so warm the bass got active way sooner than normal and would aggressively hit baits like rattletraps and jerkbaits. It was a great start to the season. Unfortunately it led to a tough summer with brutal heat. The fishing was really slow. This affected freshwater and salt as the big flounder got harder to find, presumably moving out to deeper and colder water. Fall bass fishing took longer to really get going this year as well. Only in the past couple weeks am I really starting to get that classic fall pattern of bass hitting fast moving baits...especially one of my favorites...crankbaits. I love fishing crankbaits. There is just something really fun about bumping them into cover and getting nailed by a big bass. I'm glad they are back to biting again and I can't wait to fish through November as the bass fatten up back in the creeks on baitfish. Other than the prespawn it's probably my favorite time to fish.

It seems the fall striper run is on schedule. I went out a few times with some friends to try  my luck with a tactic I've never tried before.... trolling a tube and worm. This is basically a long bit of rubber tubing with a hook on the end, tipped with some bloodworm. I've also heard GULP Sandworms work well too. This is tied to 3' of fluorocarbon leader and then to a keel with a weight attached to get to the right depth. The keel ties to your main line. My friend Capt Camo kills them with this setup in the back bays and it seems by far to be the preferred way to target stripers out of a kayak. It's tough getting used to, especially if you are paddling instead of pedaling but I still used it to hook into several stripers, though my biggest one broke off, much to my dismay. Let this be a reminder! ALWAYS retie your knots between outings! This is a fun tactic and I will report more as I keep trying it.

So my buddy Jared flew up from Mississippi to do some kayak fishing with me. We were both pumped to get into that great fall fishing. But as is often the case with this hobby... the weather conspired against us. Friday we waited for hours for the unrelenting downpours to move on. They didn't stop until around 1:00 PM and that much rain chilled that water down and the bass wouldn't hit anything. We kept at it and eventually Jared told me he would like to give up on those fish and go enjoy the Flying Fish that were chilling in my fridge. We drowned our sorrows and geared up for day 2. We hit Strathmere with my friend Smitty and tried the tube and worm for stripers. The first half of the trip we paddled against the tide (which is better for keeping the tube at the right depth) but by mid to late afternoon the wind started blowing WITH a very hard running tide. I've never been in water moving that quickly. Smitty kindly offered to pedal his Hobie back to our launch as we knew we would never make it while paddling. Jared and I paddled like crazy to get to the meeting spot, often making no headway whatsoever and resorting to finding shallow water so we could walk uptide pulling the kayaks behind us. We made it...but it was a real adventure. Luckily Jared seemed to be having fun anyway and he did manage to catch a tog at the bridge. We were so glad Smitty was there to help us and this was a reminder that every trip out is a learning experience. We learned the hard way that the weather can change quickly and wind is a kayak anglers worst enemy when you combine it with a mean tide. It was a fun adventure nonetheless. It figures that the day after Jared left I hit a local lake and caught 9 bass, mainly on crankbaits. That's fishing I guess. Addictive, fun and frustrating!    

Welcome to my new kayak fishing blog! It'll be a mixture of things...kayak fishing tips, reviews, tactics, gear discussion, fishing reports and other fun stuff from my fishing headquarters here in Salem County New Jersey. I hope you'll check in regularly as I hope to keep updating it with new info for anyone with an interest in fishing. While this blog will center around kayak fishing, any angler will enjoy it as I'm going to keep it well rounded as I fish both fresh and saltwater, kayak fish and powerboat fish and also do some surf fishing. There are three forms of fishing I don't do however. Fly fishing, ice fishing and off shore fishing. I plan on learning fly fishing one of these days, just haven't had the time. Ice fishing.... not for me! I hate winter! I use the winter to catch up on all the things my wife wants me to do around the house but didn't because I was on the water too much. And as far as off shore.... I don't have the funds or a boat big enough to get me there. Other than that I fish for anything I can... anywhere I can.

So this year I upgraded my kayak to a NuCanoe Frontier. This is an amazing boat. It's a hybrid kayak that mixes the best features of a sit on top kayak, jon boat, and canoe. It's crazy stable. I've had it in pretty rough water and it handled great. It's designed for standing. This is something I've wanted to do for some time. The ability to stand makes for more accurate casting. It also allows you to sight fish and keeps you fishing longer since you can move around and stretch. The Freedom track system allows you to put anything where you want. You can have 1 or 2 seats, rod holders wherever you want and endless amounts of setups depending on what type of fishing you are doing. I'll go over my setup in my next post. The only downsides are that it is heavy and slow. The weight doesn't bother me as I don't car top. I use my pick up truck bed. And the speed is only an issue on big bodies of water and even then all you have to do is put a trolling motor on the stern. The Frontier's flat stern allows for a trolling motor or even a gas motor! This gives you significantly more range if you need it. And you can always paddle when you get where you want to go. My next post will go over my setup and talk about what it's like fishing from my rig. Then we'll start recapping the season... which isn't over yet thankfully!