[Daniel_Gig]

Thanks for reporting

[Daniel_Gig]

Welcome. Yes you can definitely catch fish from a kayak, especially the ones where you can move hands free. It sounds like you have one of those old towne kayaks with spot lock and all. Great choice in my opinion, although I’ve never used any kayak other than a cheap paddle kayak, where boat positioning was extremely difficult. But with a trolling motor, that problem should be eliminate.

I think it also matters what your goal is. If you’re looking to fill coolers with fish every trip, then maybe a boat would’ve been a better choice. But if you’re cool with spending a morning on the water, enjoying the outdoors, and catching some fish, awesome.

In 2020, with very little fishing experience other than when I was a kid, I bought a new 21’ bay boat. In hindsight I should’ve bought a used flat boat or bass tracker. I would be more willing to adventure to new areas if I wasn’t so concerned with damaging my “pretty” fiberglass boat. I’ve thought about buying a hobie so I could travel by land to where the fish are. Instead of running 20-30 miles by boat to get out to islands, I would just go to grand isle or whatever

My one suggestion to you, especially at your age, and not knowing your physical abilities: make sure if you get flipped over, you can re board your kayak, especially if you are venturing more than swimming distance from shore. I would find a deep swimming pool where you can’t touch bottom and practice before you head out to the middle of no where. It’s harder than you might think, especially if you’re out of shape.

[Daniel_Gig]

Cool. I’ll report back when I go. Thanks

[Daniel_Gig]

@mschultz304 any report for us? How bad is it over here on the east side of the river?

[Daniel_Gig]

This is the one that’s broken. I hate that these reel makers make 100 sub models lol

[Daniel_Gig]

@WestbankJosh both of those lakes are almost 2hrs from me one way. But yeah I’d love to come try fishing down there. Might have to plan a trip down there where I stay overnight and do two days of fishing. When do they finish spawning? Like how long till that pattern changes approximately

[Daniel_Gig]

I’m not anti keeping, I love Chris bush’s philosophy with speckled truth, take only what you need and release the rest. And it doesn’t hurt to occasionally reevaluate what it is you actually need. Can’t tell you how many times Ive caught a limit then stopped at Popeyes on the way home lol.

[Daniel_Gig]

So typically I keep all my legal sized fish in the live well, even if I’m keeping fish, I throw them in the live well first. That way if I don’t catch the quantity I need, i can release the 1-4 fish, there’s nothing worse than cleaning one fish lol. Or like today, i used the live well so I could keep fishing while the bite was good. Then when i hit a lull in the action, id stop and tag a few at a time.

Exceptions to using the livewell are:

•Undersized fish (legal reasons and see below)

•Upper slot fish (I don’t wanna kill a large trout or redfish), I’ll still tag these but I stop what I’m doing and tag them at time of capture. I’ve accidentally killed them before by leaving too many in my livewell for too long.

• I don’t use the livewell if it’s extremely hot. If you use a livewell normally, you know the fish will die quickly if there’s too many and it’s too hot.

The only time I tag undersized fish is when im trying to tag a bunch of fish, and they are all undersized. Or redfish. I try to tag all the reds because I feel like they are tougher and will survive the tag better.

Once you get the kit, download the “anglers almanac” app. It makes recording them on the water way easier. I used to manually record them, but that’s time consuming. I used to always keep fish any time I had more than 5 fish. I tagged twice as many last year as I did in the first 2.5 years. Started realizing we weren’t really eating THAT much fish. And killing them to feed the dog seemed wasteful. That’s my current process, I’m sure I’ll refine it more as I tag more.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by  Daniel_Gig.

[Daniel_Gig]

It makes catch and release more fun in my mind lol

[Daniel_Gig]

Yeah you definitely need that cap to use it properly. Contact the seller.

[Daniel_Gig]

I’ve been there on my jet ski before. I don’t believe there’s a dock there, not sure how I feel about beaching my boat. not that it’s in great condition, I already have bottom chips in the hull I need to have repaired lol. But maybe it’s doable.

Is that a good sacalait location?

[Daniel_Gig]

I could see Todd doing it in a passive way. Like a year or so back he would say “ I won’t harvest any reds right now” because we were seeing so few of them. But he’s right back to harvesting them.

@Devin i agree with Boyce. I appreciate the article you wrote and have shared it. Our fishery needs someone with a voice to speak up.

I personally haven’t been out since the freeze but what I’m seeing reports wise, it doesn’t look like that many fish are being caught, my fear is that’s because there simply isn’t many left. I know you mentioned LDWF might put new regulations in place, but my question is when? They shouldn’t wait so long.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by  Daniel_Gig.

[Daniel_Gig]

Right… or chicken and cows like real Americans lol

[Daniel_Gig]

I wasn’t aware of their lack of response to the critical issues. I’ve done the star tournament the last 2 years but won’t be this year.

And yeah, “go Devin” for making that post about the freeze. People are friggin dumb. I said I wouldn’t waste time trying to enlighten (argue with ) people online in 2025, but it’s hard not to when I see people who think that 1000’s of dead game fish isn’t an issue.

[Daniel_Gig]

@Boyce you got me looking hard at the pearl now.