Drifting Son

Finally! Got a chance to get back on the water for the first time since early November. Even though the weather has been ideal for spots near me, still haven’t been able to get the schedule to work out. Had planned on fishing Wednesday with Brian but we started to see the conditions deteriorate again and bumped the trip up a day to find the last pocket of calm before the storm, so to speak. Paddled out under heavy clouds and light rain and it pretty much stayed like that all day. I dropped some bait to the bottom right away and immediately got good strikes, missing the first but landing a small (4-5 lbs) Uku. After a few tricky bait thefts, the pole once again bent into the water and quickly worked up a little bigger (6 lbs) Uku into the boat. He had way too much flip-flopping energy in the boat so I quickly pinned his head to the floor with the kage and got him in the bag. As I’m rebaiting lines and starting to drop them again, I’m feeling good about a quick start and enjoying the soothing sounds of water trickling down into the hull of… my… boat… Oh shit. I lift up my bait bag and sure enough, there’s a kage size hole under it, right at the inside water line near a scupper hole where I previously ‘pinned his head to the floor’! I’m taking on water fast. I stick my finger in it and scramble to to reel up, but can’t do it one handed, so I swap my finger for my heel over the hole and just hope I’m keeping it covered while I get the lines in. I paddle over to Brian to to reveal that I’m an idiot, and that I’m heading back to the beach to dump the water and find a quick fix. I suspect he already knew about the idiot part.

Best quickie solution was a simple 2″ stick hammered into the hole. Ukus went into the cooler and I paddled back out for more. By then the winds had turned on enough to turn off bottom fishing, so we trolled a while. Lost some bait to roving bands of Aha, missed a few decent strikes, then called it a day around noon as a looming rain band began to move in. Gave the small Uku to Brian to eat with his Nabeta and drove back up the mountain with smile on my face and only a little distracted by passing thoughts of proper plastic hull repair.

6# Uku (Grey Snapper)

This entry was posted on January 3, 2012 at 19:12 and is filed under Fishing, Kayaks . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.