The wife and I finally got the chance to take the new yak on a river trip. We decided on doing the top part of the Mission Paddling Trail of the SA River. We launched at Roosevelt Park and took out at Espada Dam. It was a good time and sometimes a hard paddle and/or drag, but definitely worth it. We started off with Crickhoppers but, only got a few biters and no takers. Later, when we found a large, shallow rock and gravel flat, we switched to LFT baby shads on 1/16 Kalin jigheads and we started catching Rios and Guad/Smallie hybrids, but the still missing as many as we caught. I switched to a tiny 1" craw soft plastic that I had picked up in Wal-Mart years ago and started landing many more fish including longears. On this same flat, my wife caught the biggest tilapia I've ever seen! She was so proud and she said that fish made her day! We moved off the flat and paddled more down river since wifey wanted to catch some bass. In the middle of the Trail we found deeper holes and caught Guad/Smallie hybrids hand over fist. The biggest being 15" and all of two lbs. I tried some smaller, tried and true sunfish tackle, but the black bass wouldn't lay off, so I decided to switch back to bass gear and go with the flow. All in all, we only caught one longear, but did catch a huge tilapia, a handful of Rios, and more bass than we could count. Great day for us, especially since we rarely get to go out together!

Here are a few pics:

Looks like a great time...nice pics too..

Awesome post and pics, Jagg! How was it paddling a tandem kayak? I'm on the fence about what to get. A tandem kayak or a canoe would be great for those times when my wife wants to come along, but mostly it would just be me.

Great times,nice fish,and some Lifetime Memories! Good job jagg!

Awesome trip Jagg That is a huge Tilapia.

Those are some cool Bass, I like their pattern!

I will try to float that section at some point after seeing this post.

Love fishing the San Antonio congrats to you both looks like y'all had a blast

Looks like an awesome trip!

Thanks yall! It was certainly fun!

That's about where I was, too. Needed an option for single or tandem kayak. It's one of the biggest reasons I went with the Nucanoe Frontier 12. I have an extra bench seat if I want to take my wife, one of my kids or just a friend, but I can take the bench seat off the track and still have the functionality of a single kayak.best of both worlds for my situation.

It was definitely an eye opener, Fritz. Figured she had a rouge cat or bass for such skinny water (3' deep). I could see the bottom the whole time, but the dang thing kept running under the yak every which a way. Didn't really get a good look till it made a run for some boulders down current. That's when I got the net. Thing was the biggest fish of the day at 16". We thought about submitting it for the C&R record after, but we didn't get a pic on the bumper board.

The bass were a new one on me. When we were stationed here 8 years ago I caught a lot more largemouth bass, but now it seems all that we've caught from a handful of trips on the river so far this summer are the smallie/Guadalupe. I thought I remembered seeing that TPWD was gonna make an effort to introduce and make Guads the black bass on SA. I don't know what happened, but for now, the bass fishing is great from Roosevelt Park past the missions.

Nice post! Always love seeing family taking part!

Excellent post, thanks for sharing

Great post jagg. How long did it take to float that trip?

It's a nice change to see Guads, Smallmouth, and Spots.

The whole trip was around 8 hours, but we fished hard. TPWD says it should be about 3-5 hours for the whole thing depending on the flow and this time the flow was moderate at best.

Good times jagg! Nice pics and fish.my wife bought us a malibu 2 tandem kayak for fathers day a few years back. Best fathers day gift ever