Kayaking For Salmon

[pop-vlado]

I've always wanted to catch a salmon off the kayak. I got my first chance last week after the rain brought a big run into my favourite trib. On the third cast of the day, this buck hit my jointed rapala. I seriously underestimated the difficulty of getting one of these beasts into the kayak. My trout net stood no chance. My rod stood no chance of lifting it off the bottom. I had to push my kayak to the shore and somehow brought it in to the shallow water. After releasing the fish, I was in so much pain that I just went home after.

[CLofchik]

Gotta love the mudsharks, looks like a natural too. Think I've seen you once or twice working that trib, I've got the 16' kevlar canoe with a white kayak deck.

BTW -- You don't have to drive all the way out to that trib, there's a pile of fish stacked up off Hamilton Beach. The dunes & pier protect it from everything except an East wind so you can cast in relative calm all day.

[smerchly]

Nice job on the smoked salmon.....looks good . . For the kayak boaters who go to the River , this article is interesting . It says the smugglers use kayaks to take people across the river & have fishing gear with them as a cover . I would say yakers & canoers are being watched very carefully .

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2012/09/27/agents-notebook-stories-from-the-front-lines

[CLofchik]

It's starting to get past prime time to catch salmon out of a yak, but there are still plenty infront of the piers. Worked Hamilton Beach for four hours yesterday with a few other guys in yaks and we scraped up seven fish between us, 6 Chinooks & 1 rainbow. Four came off trolling or jigging spoons in 30FOW the rest came from casting Reef Runners tight to the pier. And that was a slow morning, nice thing about a yak is that you can find biting fish all day long now, you don't need to pound the concrete after dark like you do fishing off the pier. And even though we were nailing fish 50yrds off the pier, the guys casting didn't get one hookup.

If you have a yen to land a salmon out of a yak now is the last kick at the can while the mudsharks still have a little fight left in them, I like flatlining crankbaits for them while they're still in the lake before they waste away too much. Lot's more fight!

Reef Runners, Kwikfish, Storm Deep Thundersticks have all caught me a pile of fish.

Edit -- Oh yeah, having a BFN helps a lot! (BFN=Big Frackin' Net!)

Trying to hand bomb these fish into a yak just doesn't work well at all.

[CLofchik]

Nice job on the smoked salmon.....looks good . . For the kayak boaters who go to the River , this article is interesting . It says the smugglers use kayaks to take people across the river & have fishing gear with them as a cover . I would say yakers & canoers are being watched very carefully .

http://www.stcathari...the-front-lines

Heh so that would explain it.

One of the Navy's big Halifax class frigates was in Hamilton last week, the Ville du Quebec. It's small by modern warship standards but at 5k tonnes was pretty impressive to paddle by.

You can see the size comparison between it and it's WW2 Tribal class contemporary, it dwarfs the Haida.

Ofcourse being a small canoe bobbing around the harbour traffic it's not hard to go unnoticed, these guys weren't happy when they noticed I had snuck in through their security cordon. Good thing I wasn't wearing a shemagh yelling "Allah Ackbar!"

Heh those Coasties have a pimped new ride to play with, even their dinghy is impressive riding piggyback on mamma.

Just another day paddling around Hamilton, atleast nobody ran me over.