Matt's wild weekend!

Last night was the third in four nights that I hit sturgeon alley in kayak with a group of friends.   Up till now we've caught lots of tommy cod, eel, catfish and white perch but no sturgeon.    Finally last night we had some luck!

Matt McDonald who is new to sturgeon fishing this year has caught a few through the summer and last night was a pretty special night for him.   After several hours of Matt, myself and a couple others having no luck, he finally managed to land a nice 34 inch shortnose sturgeon.    A little later he landed a 21 inch atlantic!   So Matt appears to be 'the man' at this point!   

Finally I manage to land my first sturgeon in a few weeks with a 31 inch short nose, it was nice to get that monkey off my back.  

But Matt wasn't done... a little later his hooks what he says is a striper!   The fish jumped in the night right off the start but we barely glimpsed it with our headlights.   Then the fight was on!    Matt was taken in circles fighting this fish for 6 - 10 min!     We were thinking striper, but finally he gets it to the surface and sees it's a huge sturgeon!     After getting it in and giving it a measure, it ended up at 50 inches!    Congrats Matt on joining the 50 inch club!     The sturgeon went back into the water to be caught again next week (hopefully by me!) at the sturgeon derby!

Thankfully Matt didn't break one of my records 2 nights in a row (I have a 52 and 54 inch sturgeon in my name)!    Friday night he hauled in an absolutely rediculous American Eel measuring a whopping 32 inches!    That easily breaks my personal best eel of 29 inches!     It was a great weekend for Matt as you can see!

Matt's success has come using the rigging and technique that I came up with for sturgeon fishing and have had good luck with this past year.   If your not from our area and would like to visit and go out in search of one of these dinosaurs, take a look at the "Fishing With Joe" section and we will see if we can get a picture of you holding your own trophy fish like this!

The new ride, outfitted with Yakama!

So several weeks ago my 2003 CRV, which has served me well since I bought it new needed more in brake/suspension/body work than the vehicle was worth, so it was time to bite the bullet and get a new ride.   I ended up with a 2014 Jeep Wrangler Sport Ultimate (which just means 4 doors).   It's a great vehicle, though off the lot wasn't really equipped to carry my Predator 13 without using my trailer.

So I looked to a kayak angling and blogging friend, Chris Arnold, who also has a 4 door Jeep Wrangler for some advice and decided to install the Smittybilt SRC rack.    The rack looks awesome, allows for the hard top and soft top to be switched, and can carry 300 lbs.    The downside though is that it's extremely loud in the wind, especially with the soft top on.    To counteract this, I put in a couple of wind deflectors, one above the windshield and one on the rack itself.   This made a huge difference in the noise, but still with the soft top on it wasn't 'quiet'.     With the hard top however, noise really is no longer a factor, so that was a relief!

So, having the rack on, I then needed to get a kayak rack.   For this I turned to Yakima, who were happy to accept me into their VIP team.   My sincere thanks to Yakima for this.   Talking to one of the great reps at Yakima, we decided to go 2 paris of Mako Aero and the Showboat 66.   With these items, loading my 93 pound Old Town Predator 13 up onto the roof rack of the jeep (about 6 1/2 feet high) becomes easy by myself!    I simply lift one end of the kayak up onto the rolling bar of the Showboat 66, then lift and push the other end till the kayak has rolled up onto the kayak holders, from there I just strap it in!

One very nice feature of the Yakima Mako Aero kayak holder, is that the straps that come with it have a rubber coating over the heavy metal piece where the strap loops through.    This allows me to toss the strap over the kayak without having to worry about any damage being done to the Jeep by the metal parts.   Someone was really thinking there!

Another great advantage to the Smittybilt Rack and the Yakima gear on a Jeep is that it offers a natural safe place to store and transport your rods!    I can just slide 4 or 5 rods under the kayak above the rack, with the reels in the front and they are good to go.   For added safety I use a small bungee to hold the rods in place on both the front and the back.      Here I have 2 of my Denali MH rods set up for sturgeon fishing in Rod Gloves, and a couple of bigger rods for stripers ready to go tonight