Multi species fishing Pohick Bay Video

Daily Routine: Micro fishing

Yesterday we did a little 2 hour session of micro fishing at a local pond to keep the streak going. I broke out the fly rod for the first time in 2016 and to say I am a little rusty is an understatement. I could not make the line lay straight to save my life I was able to make one cast that didn't spook everything In the vicinity and was able to land one bluegill. The best part of my flyfishing was when a fellow fisherman took pity on me and showed me the proper roll cast technique. Soon after catching the gill I put the fly rod back in the truck and grabbed my ultralight spinning rod.  I rigged up with a 1 inch gulp minnow and we went to fish a small stream that runs through the park . We caught a few creek chubs and Collin even caught a surprise 12 inch largemouth. 

the water is small but the fish are plentiful

90 Crappie Per Hour!

Daily Routine: Crushing the Crappie

With the time change and more daylight after work I am finding lots of time to fish. The main target for this month has been crappie and they have been hit or miss. In the ponds where I caught many on the fly rod they have been nonexistent but in the river they have been on fire getting bigger and more plentiful  every week. My near citation crappie from last week had me dreaming of stringers of big slabs so we decided to try a day fishing with big crappie baits. I abandoned the float and fly and I tied on a 4 inch storm swim bait. Most people would think that that it is too big to catch crappie but if you look at a their mouth it is large enough to swallow some big forage. Collin was skeptical that it would work but on my third cast I pulled a 13 inch crappie out then a couple casts later another nice slab. Soon after though i snagged my line and lost the bait. I switched to a weightless 4 inch zoom fluke and picked off 4 more nice crappie. Big baits work the quality of the fish was much better every fish I caught was 12  or better while Collin picked through the smaller ones.

Ultralight Beam: Pohick Bay Ultralight Fishing

After driving for 4 hours and fishing for 9 without a bite we decided to go for a fun trip in the Potomac river. The goal was to find a huge school crappie that would make us forget about yesterdays failure and provide a couple hours of ultralight entertainment. The forecast called for scattered showers but we threw the lightweight rain suits in the yaks just in case.

Utility Trailer into a Kayak Trailer for $200

Loaded up heading to New York last year.

My current trailer design was built on a 4 by 8 utility trailer I had designed it to free up space in the Jeep for day trips and overnighters to allow maximum sleeping space in the truck. The design worked well and the only problem I had was that after long trips the bolts that held the 2x4s together would loosen up by the end of the trip. We have also out grown the first iteration of the trailer we have added another boat to the fleet and we need more storage for longer trips. We have big plans this year to travel and fish from New York to Texas and everywhere in between. This means the trailer needed to be updated to be able to carry more gear and withstand highway driving without falling apart all for less than my budget of 200 dollars. 

Tearing it down back to stock.

The main improvement of the new design is going to an all metal construction I used a set of Universal Truck ladder rack as the crossbars which included mounting hardware. The bars were super easy to install and are very sturdy I also added Loctite to the threads of each bolt to prevent loosening like last time. Instead of using PVC pipe as the supports for the kayaks I opted for the commercial kayak rollers and cradles. This would have added a huge cost to the rebuild as two brand new cradle systems would cost more than what  the trailer cost me. We were lucky that Collin won a complete Yakima cradle system at a tournament raffle last year which and I bought a used Thule system for $60 on eBay. My used system was missing some mounting hardware but the existing hardware didn't fit the 2 inch crossbars anyway so it didn't really matter. I had to buy $10 bucks worth of U bolts to attach it to the trailer so $70 for 2 sets of kayak cradles couldn't be beat. If I was being really cheap I could have mounted the PVC to the crossbars but the cradles conform to the boats much better. Plus the cradles were designed to perform on high speed long distance trips and overall they look much cleaner. So far I have spent $146 to rebuild my trailer I still need a spare tire mount and I plan on adding locking rod storage.

almost finished kayak trailer

the boats are the same height as the truck

Daily routine: Paydirt

Dinner

Finally my brother and I were able to locate a hungry school of crappie. We k had been fishing a couple of the local ponds for them with only one landed all year. The river had been high and I was thinking that the pond fish would be warmer and little ahead of the river fish. The rivers finally made it to a fish able level still a little high and dirty but not bad. We had some minnows we caught and a small tackle box laced with a couple of different colored jigs and heads.

Kayak Maintenence: Replacing stretched out Bungee

 

Fresh bungee. 

The beauty of owning a kayak is that it does not require much maintenance if you treat it properly. If you own a boat that is over a certain age certain parts wear out and need to be replaced. One of the easiest parts on the kayak to replace when it is worn out are the bungee cords. My brother has a 2009 Hobie revo that is in great shape except for the saggy bungees. The front hatch bungees had stretched over time and were allowing some water in when the revo would cut through waves. The paddle holder had stretched to the point where the paddle would rock and pivot while strapped down.