New to the forum

I started getting interested in kayak fishing about a year ago. Started googling kayak fishing and found this site. I never took the time to sign up until now but I have already gotten a lot of good information from here just lurking. My biggest dilemma was what type and brand of kayak to get. I was afraid to put out a bunch of money and then just have a kayak that always sat in the garage. I finally broke down and bought a 2 person inflatable that fits in a suitcase. The wife and I flew out to Portland and then rented a car and headed to the John Day River. This actually worked out way better than I thought it would.


The smallmouth on the John Day are not know for size but there are a lot of them and they always seem willing to bite. It also flows through some beautiful country.

One thing lead to another and I was wandering around Academy when I noticed a Pelican Enforcer that was 60 percent off. The wife was a little disgusted with me as I had just went in to get a $1.99 bag of crappie skirts! Now I had a real kayak that was actually meant to fish out of. All I can say is I was hooked from the start.

Now I starting catching fish and was able to get to places I had always wanted to try when I was bank fishing.

Nice looking water.

Welcome aboard. A lot of my $1 trips end up that way too.

Thanks for the welcome! Things are only getting worse. This spring, while the days were warming up the water was still quite cool (northern Oklahoma) I came under the thought that I had this kayaking thing mastered. The next thing I know I was trying to get out from underneath the kayak and back to the surface! I am now more cautious and always wear a PFD. I thought, maybe I need to,read more on the forum and maybe I would learn something. Well, there's a video there about peacock bass in Florida. One thing lead to another:


What I great trip and I really loved those Hobie Outbacks!

The Florida trip,was pretty amazing and those guys do offshore and inshore trips as well. We decided to use some of our miles and booked a few days with them over the weekend of the 4th. We arrived a day early and did a little bank fishing on our own.



The peacocks and Mayan Cichlids are really bulldogs.

Sorry some of the pics are sideways. The next day was too rough to go offshore so we headed to a place to fish for snook and tarpon. We managed to get some small snook and mangrove snappers but my wife was the only one to hook a tarpon and it came off after a couple of jumps.
All in all it was still a great day in a kayak.

The next day we headed back to the beach at dark thirty. It's a little scary to launch a kayak in the surf if you haven't done it before. Matt Eckert of Deep Blue helped us each get started and away we went. We were slow trolling goggle eyes and my wife got the first hit. Matt told me to keep going so we wouldn't get tangled up. I could hear her hooting and hollering behind me but didn't see any of the action. She texted me that she landed a big king mackerel. I just kept trolling along hoping for a bite. After a while I heard her hooting and carrying on again. Yep, another text and another king. I dug out a bottle of water and a pack of crackers and just kept trolling along. I looked at the time and it was 10:30, I had been fishing for four hours without a bite. Somehow I wasn't too worried and within minutes I had a strike I had a good fight and a bit of a ride and ended up landing a real nice blackfin tuna. After pictures and a fresh bait I got my line back out and not two minutes later I hooked up on a nice king. While Matt is helping me land my king my wife starts in again hollering fish on! For a while this fish seemed intent on the Bahamas but finally turned north. After a full hour and three miles she finally landed a big jack crevalle. We ended day one and what a day it was.

That last day I really didn't care if we caught a bunch or not. It had been such a great trip already. The surf was up even more than the previous day and it was really scary getting out. We got our google eyes out and started trolling. I thought I was getting a bite but when I would try to set the hook nothing was there. I thought maybe weeds were making it do that. After a while Matt had me real in to see if my bait was tangled. As I reeled in I told Matt it felt like something was on there. It ended up being a small barracuda about two feet long. He said they do that sometimes. They hook themselves and then just follow along. We re baited and as I was letting my line out I had a hit. It ended up being a really nice king mackerel. By this time my wife is way ahead of us so we re baited and headed after her. She needed a new bait so I went on ahead. I had peddled fast to catch up so I thought I would reel in and make sure my bait was okay. I had a Blue runner on this time and he was still good and lively. I had just got about a hundred feet of line out out when my rod bent over and the reel started screaming. I looked back to see a sailfish launch out of the water! After about 10 minutes of running and jumping it headed out to sea (by the way, I was the one hooting and hollering this time). He made a Deep,dive and just started pulling line out. I kept pressure on him all the time, if he wasn't pulling line I was pulling on him. After about thirty minutes he came to the surface about a hundred feet in front of me. His bill came sticking up out of the water. I thought I had him then when suddenly his entire body came rocketing out of the water. He made another long line burning run. The next time I got him up the other were catching up with me. The sail put on another jumping show about fifty feet in front of us. After about 45 minutes I had him beside the kayak. He tried to make a jump away from me but I pulled him back, then he put his head out of the water and tried to thrash the yak and I grabbed him by the bill! Yahoooo!! I landed a sailfish!!! After some quick pics I paddled along with him for quite a while. He was swimming good and biting my hand so I released it and watched it swim away.


Sorry for being so long winded but I'm still pumped up about this fish.

Wow!

Amazing how addictive those $1.99 trips can lead to world travels.
Welcome aboard!!! Looking forward to future posts

Those look like awesome trips!!!

Yeah I just wanted to fish the local pond after seeing a bass buster on it. Found a $65 kayak and bought it. Now I have several thousand in a fleet of 5 kayaks and a trailer. It was an opening to a whole new world for me because I used to just fish for bass now I'm fishing for all kinds of fish. Before my kayak I had only been saltwater fishing once. Now I go a couple times a year. Going to Florida later this year and a sail fish is on my bucket list.

Welcome to the addiction! You've already had some trips of a life time!

Welcome to the addiction!

Man those are some nice trips! I will add those to my to-do list when I get the chance.

Welcome. Awesome pics. I fished with Deep Blue too in June while we were in Florida. Conditions were rough so I didnt manage as good as y'all did. Sailfish eluded me. Welcome to the addiction.

Thanks for the welcome folks.

Awesome pics!

Nice work and Welcome to the forum. Nice release on that sail. That was an awesome read

You officially made me homesick for the deep blue sea.

Welcome Home ! Really Great introduction to the sport.

A VERY long time ago I went to a laser scanning conference at Sanabel Island in Florida. I traveled a day early to relax, but then an outbreak of food poisoning postponed the conference for a week. I had been wanting to try a plastic kayak for a long time. I rented a Tarpon 140 and bought some basic fishing tackle and took some advice from the rental place. WOW, what a week and beginning of an addiction. Two weeks after getting home I still had a grin on my face and bought a Hobie Outback. I spent the next year doing scans in oil refineries along the Texas and Louisiana coast from Brownsville to New Orleans. I worked about 1-2 days a week and carried my Outback with me everywhere. At that time ( under 1000 members then )TexasKayakfisherman was the only website and I learned a lot from a small but very kind community of kayak fishermen.

I am headed to Seattle in October and hope to score my first Halibut.

Thanks for sharing and do Keep us posted.
Phill

That takes me back Carver. I started kayak fishing south Florida in 2003. I had been down there since 87 but saw my first sit on top kayak while driving back up the keys when I was bumper to bumper in traffic next to a car with a Cobra Fish & Dive. Must have been next to it for half an hour wondering about all the possibilities. Stopped at Florida Bay Outfitters in Key Largo on the way back, checked out every kayak they had which was the best selection on the east coast back then and maybe still is, bought the book that had recently come out, Kayak Fishing the Revolution, got on the computer when I got home that day, found Kayak Fishing Stuff website and Texas Kayak Fisherman. Found out there was a new national kayak tournament trail starting up, Extreme Edge sponsored by Humminbird, gave up golf cold turkey, rented a kayak from the local dealer and entered my first tournament a couple of weeks later. Became a big fan of a lot of the guys from Texas that traveled to Florida for that first tournament and TexasKayakFishermen. Became friends with SlowRide, LetsGo, Tom Stubblefield (owner of KFS), Vincent, PA Hillbilly and a few others. What an experience! We had 5 tournaments, 3 in Florida, 2 in Texas. Almost got blown away at the one in Rockport, Texas.

Good luck on the Washington halibut. I'll be in Alaska next week fishing for salmon and halibut although not in a kayak.