Man, it’s been too long since my last post. But to be completely honest I think I begin a lot of my post with a statement like that. Nevertheless I am back and I have a little post to share.
My fishing adventures have been pretty regular since my last post. I haven’t made any special trips to new counties or caught any new species recently. Most of July was spent on the kayak in places I have fished before. I did take a small trip with my youngest son and his NJROTC group to a camp in West Virginia. While they spent time in PT (physical training) each morning, or on the shooting range, I spent time on the side of the lake at the Camp Mountaineer. While I could see small panfish swimming around, I really couldn’t get any of them to bite. But I did have a pretty good week catching largemouth. Whether I was using a senko worm, wacky rigged, or a green-pumpkin grub or a finesse worm, I caught bass each day. They were all pretty much the same size, between 10 to 12 inches, and healthy. At the end of the week, there was supposed to be fishing contest between the cadets using bait that they had “found another their campsite.” The campground was run by the Boy Scouts of America, but due to thunderstorms in the area it was called off; so unfortunately any of the tactics I figured out wouldn’t be able to help our group.
Once I got back to my regular waters, I went back to putting the kayak on the water and spending about an hour and a half catching what I could. Most of the time I have been on the Patuxent River, at Nan’s Cove. I’ve caught many white perch as well as a few striped bass, or as they are called in Maryland “rockfish.” I have been using some live bait, minnows, when catching them. I’ll tell more about that in another post. I did make a report to the Maryland Angler’s Log and a former colleague spotted it. She is now the outdoors reporter for the Maryland Enterprise and she included my thoughts in
her article.
Of course the most important part of any fishing trip is making it home safe which brings me to the title of this post. Over the last few years, I have been using one or the other Ocean Kayak brand kayaks that my family owns. We got both of them at the same time close to 10 years ago. Up to last season, I was able to tolerate the fact that each of them were taking on water. Or maybe I should say taking IN water? Being sit on top kayaks, the haul is formed on hard plastic. Unfortunately we had nowhere to store them except outside and which meant they were in the direct sunlight, something the manufacturer warns against. Well that lead to leaks, and recently I had to spend 15 to 20 minutes after a 90-minute outing allowing it to drain. I mean gallons of water were coming out. Well this past Monday I was returning to the launch when I shifted on the kayak and I felt the water inside slosh from one side to another. When it did, I almost went overboard. I got back to the launch, loaded it up and returned to home. I spoke to my wife about it. That afternoon I removed any hardware I wanted to keep, my anchor trolley, paddle clips, and I took the kayak to the transfer station to be taking to be recycled. Two days later I was on the water with my new kayak, an
Ocean Kayak band CAPER ANGLER. While it will take a few trips to get used to fishing from it, I think I really am going to enjoy it. Please come back to see how things are going. Until then…Tight Lines!!
As an aside - a friend of the family saw the article and mailed it to my wife, so I thought I'd share it in "print form" as well.
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