CountBassula

OK, assume price is of no concern (I can sell few guns to sponsor this :-) ), and I want a kayak that I can propel with my feet and can stabilize, what are my options?

for tipping. i don't want to land in a gator invested water :-) standing would be nice too though

Hi Guys! So I think it's that time when I want to get more serious and be on the water. Given budget and other constrains, I'm thinking about getting a kayak, but have some questions about which one to get. Here are my requirements, please tell me what I should get: 1) Has to be LIGHT! I want to be able to pick it up from my garage and walk half a mile with it to a nearby canal where I can safely drop it in the water. 2) I need stabilizers for it, something that will stick out on each side and will make it much harder for it to tip over (what are those things called???). 3) Preferably on the cheaper side, could I keep it all under $500? (Kayak, stabilizer, paddle, life vest). I think this will be a way to go for me. I have a ton of canals around my house where I can walk to and drop it in the water. Would also save me the trouble of sneaking behind people's backyards :-) Please advise!!! Thanks! Martin

Used to be senko, now it's a Zoom Swim Super Fluke, Shad color, on a 5/0 EWG hook :-) ALWAYS produces :-)

Whiskey. Xanax. LOL J/K. Breath slowly...

They aren't a problem in S.FL. that people once thought they would become. Oh and wait till you catch one! They are FUN!!!!!!

Hi Gang! So I rigged one of my rods (Compre / Curado) with 50 lbs braid and hooked some hollow body frogs with a goal to catch some snakeheads today. Well, my first catch was a decent size bass (see attached pic), and after than I caught 4 snakeheads. First one I got it to land but it got off the hook before I pulled my camera out. Then there was THE MONSTER! OMG it must have been the single largest fish I ever hooked! It felt massive! I felt like my rod was going to break! It put up a huge fight! I casted 20 yards out along canal's edge, and almost instantly got a bite, fought it for about a minute and right when I almost had it on land my raided line snapped!!!!!!!!!!!! I was in tears, almost :-) one because I lost a nice frog, and two because I lost what looked like the largest fresh water fish I ever hooked! This got me thinking... snakeheads sure LOVE some frogs! BUT what can I do to prevent line breaking... I know it wasn't the weight of the fish that broke it, it must have been it's teeth! So I had this idea today (borrowed from my ocean/shark fishing days): very think and short steel leader! What if I got 2-4 inch long steel like at the end of my braid, and attach the frog to that! There's no way snakehead would eat through that, right? Has anyone tried it? Anyways, I hooked 1 bass and 4 snakeheads today, they all got away except the bass! So what's the right setup for those elusive monsters?!? Thicker braid? 60, 70, 100lbs braid on my reel? Or a steel leader? HELP! ME! M. P.S. I know it's probably blasphemy to say this on this forum, but I'm really enjoying going out and targeting snakeheads, they are just so much more fun to catch! I mean the fight they put up is nothing a bass could even dream of doing :-D

Oh, and the canal is not attached to a lake anywhere. it's all part of the canal system behind residential homes. i live two streets from this canal and i enter through friend's backyard... then i follow VERY closely to the water, i'm never more than 10 feet away from the bank.

nop, i'm on foot. i enter to the canal through a property of a friend who's permission I have to do so, and then i walk along the edge of it for about half a mile. If i look at google maps of my house, it shows me my property line which ends about 20 feet before the cana's edge, i understand it's public land. see, most people in my neighborhood don't mind. they come out, say hi, want to see a fish i catch, etc. but once in a while i come across a grumpy, and i wonder...

I understand that some number of feet from the canal's edge is public land. I've been fishing canals and basically going behind people's backyards and I assume I'm not trespassing if I stay close enough, correct? Am I 100% legal fishing those canals if I stick close to the water? Do you know of any law(s) regarding this? I'm asking because some old guy have me some crap about it today because his dog was barking and he was like "pal, you're aggravating my dog! ble ble ble", I kindly said that I'll be moving on and to have a good evening. Anyways I just want to be sure i'm in the clear, legally...

I used to fish senko exclusively, and was told "well if it catches fish use it", but I couldn't help but have this feeling of cheating and being a lame one lure fisherman :-) Soooo, I started trying other lures: lizards, flukes, swim flukes, basically soft plastics. i've had great luck with weightless flukes, and tried swim flukes and now that's my go to bait :-) but at least the fishing is more rewarding to me now, i can swim the fluke or topwater it too. P.S. there's always swim-senko :-)

all i've been using last few months are flukes and swim flukes! you can even walk them top water, i caught bass and snakeheads on them!

don't know about their casting rods, but i have 3 hurricane spinning rods and they're great, for about $90, oh and my local Sports Authority on Powerline Rd and Hilsborough Blvd has ALL fishing gear 25% off! Shimano Compre is $99 and I love mine too

LOL ok J/K on my last post, I also have 2 Compre rods, one 6'8" MH/F with a Curado, and another 7' with Citica, both great rigs as well. I guess I go Shimano becasue LgMouthGambler told me to do it :-) , errr, I mean because back in my bicycle racing days I had Shimano parts and they worked great, so I sort of have a sentiment for the company.

There is only one true path to enlightenment, and it begins with Shimano Crucial 6'8" MH/F with a Chronarch attached to it :-D

yep, i was 5 or 6 years old when i caught my very first fish! i was living in Poland at the time, and went with my mom and step dad on a summer vacation at a near by lake (we stayed in a small cabin). i remember seeing other fisherman and wanted to do it, so here's what I did (TRUE STORY, i remember every detail to this day): i found some old tangled up fishing line, managed to pull 5-6 feet of it, i found a straight thin metal pin with I bent in half myself to make a hook; i tied the pin to the line and the other end to a stick i found laying on the ground. i used a small ball of bread and i caught my first fish: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C5%82o%C4%87 (sorry, the wiki page is in Polish but you can see a pic). ever since then i've been fishing as a kid in Poland; then i stopped for years and slowly picked it back up in the States. last 6 months i really got back into bass fishing (i've bass fished when i was in HS and College a little during my summer breaks).

Welcome! I've started bank fishing here in FL about 6 months ago, and had most luck with 5-6" senko weightless t-rigged, and recently with swim baits: swim super flukes in shad, pearls, or baby bass colors, green lizards and frogs, and even some 10 inch worms, all t-rigged with a 1/8oz bullet weight free floating on the line in front of the hook. Look up my username "mvorbrodt" on this forum and you'll find plenty of posts with pics of my catches :-) i've also had some luck with topwater lures, but not much. also, when bank fishing, most banks are carved out to be deep with a steep drop off, you'll have more luck casting along the edge of a canal withing 6 feet MAX away from the shore line; and if you're brave, cast withing inches of the shore and you'll likely hook a snakehead too :-) good luck! tight lines! and i'm looking forward to posts with pics of massive fish you catch!!! FL is THE place to be for bass fishing ;-)

Thanks :-)

probably 20-30 yards without breaking a sweat. my new Chronarch on a 6'8" Crucial casts like a dream with 3 breaks on and spool tension adjusted to let the lure drop slowly when the spool is in free spin. This way I also get ZERO backlash. If I want to cast further, I keep 3 brakes on but remove all tension from spool using the knob next to the cranking handle, then my swim fluke will fly FAR, but the spool is backlashing more than i'm comfortable with and have to slow it down as the lure approaches the water. In this configuration I can probably push 40 yard mark. Now, on my ocean surf rig with a 2oz pyramid weight and a dead fish on the hooks I can really make it fly using pendulum cast, I would say farthest I've ever was able to cast was pushing 70-80 yards... but nothing beats soliciting some help from a surfer buys on the beach, you ask them nicely and they'll paddle your lure few hundred yards out :-)

Went out to the canal near my house again (I've been doing it a lot lately) and the bite was absolutely on fire! It stopped raining here at 5pm and I hit the canal at 5:30, fished till 7:30pm, I must have pulled at least 10-15 fish. Strange thing though, half of the bass I pulled were smaller than usual and very aggressive for some reason, I've never had fish fight me so hard as those smaller guys did today; I wonder if I was pulling males off the beds and they were super mad about it :-/ also when I pull a bass out of the water they usually calm down once I lip them, but not those little guys, they wouldn't stop thrusting like mad even as I was taking the hooks out... strange, any ideas? Anyways, see attached pics of the larger catches of the day :-)

I recently sold my remaining 8 boxes of Cuban Cigars to fund my new casting rod rigs (got 3 now) and haven't been shooting guns in almost a year, so yea :-)

is that you in the video? looks like a lot of snakeheads were caught that day! i need to learn how to take the meet off the fish better, i learned the hard way to play surgeon AFTER taking the fillets off :-( you do fish in coral springs right? that's where I live, N of Atlantic and S of Royal Palm, W of University :-) maybe we can snakehead fish some day.

I don't plan on eating many, nor often :-) I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Plus as I mentioned in my OP, it had parasites (roundworms) which are not a problem if you cook it well (which I did, for like 20 minutes in hot oil, just to be sure :-), but still don't want to take that risk to often. after preparation I cleaned the whole area with clorox wipes and all. WDinarte, i caught this one from the bank in a canal, and i notice they all sit withing a foot or two of the bank's edge. they like to hang out in shallow water and in/near vegetation.

In that case, never mind :-) Thanks for the info!

Well, looks like I have to make an official correction to this thread: THE FISH I CAUGHT WAS A BOWFIN, NOT A SNAKEHEAD. You can tell by the eyespot on the tail, apparently they are often mistaken for snakeheads and are considered trash fish and not tasty at all... Darn do I feel stupid now...