Zen and the Art of Kayak Fishing

LIGHTENING THE LOAD

By: Hayes Anderson, Old Town Pro Staff

Where’s the breaking point of too much stuff for a day trip? I get having enough stuff to cover the water column maybe a rain jacket or suit and a first aid kit but when is enough enough?

Let’s do this. Let’s take rain gear, a change of clothes and the first aide kit off the table and consider them part of your boat or kayak. Fair? I’ll take it a step farther snacks and something to drink that includes coffee. It must include coffee.

I struggled with this and still do from time to time but the more I fish small streams and rivers the more stuff I leave behind. I’ve gone from as many as nine rods, three Plano 4700’s and a small backpack of soft plastics to less than half of that.

I feel very comfortable with four rods, one Plano 4700, a box of toads, a binder of spinnerbaits, a binder of small swimbaits and maybe two or three packs of soft plastics.

Because my focus lately has been heavily on river fishing it’s made me think about how I had been fishing all along. You see all those times I had been carrying all that gear no matter how good my intention or where I was fishing I never used much of it. Most of the rods stayed stowed and the tackle never even looked at.

Here’s another example; I would carry quite literally 10+ pounds of soft plastics and only use something like a magnum lizard or a 10″ black plastic worm. So why carry all that stuff if I’m not going to use it? Not to mention if something was to happen and I flipped all that gear goes to the bottom.

Unless we are working on a new skill or we’ve been tipped off that they are biting a certain bait we’re going to fish our strengths. We are. We’re going to fish what we have confidence in and what’s worked for us in the past. So why fool ourselves into carrying a bunch of stuff we all know we’re never going to use?

Another thing I’ve been doing is not carrying as much stuff in my containers. Instead of 30-40 jigs I’ll carry three or four in three or four colors so at most I have maybe 12-15 jigs max. Then I hope I don’t lose them all in eight minutes.

Same goes for swimbaits, I carry what I can work the water column from top to bottom with, which for me means a rat or two, a glide bait or two and maybe some sort of multi-jointed thing and lastly some soft plastic to drag on or swim close to the bottom.

That’s it. As I’m writing this it’s making me question how much stuff I actually had been carrying and making me wonder if I’m now carrying between 1/4 – 1/3 of what I had been in tackle alone. Kind of crazy.

Now this could be totally anecdotal but I haven’t noticed a drop-off in the number or quality of fish I’ve been catching (Easy smart aleck I can catch fish.) since I started doing this about a year ago.

Let’s discuss, give me some feedback on how much stuff you carry and why.

Until next time, tight lines….