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It's been a few years since posting--I haven't lived in the Chesapeake region for several years but check in on occasion.
Thought I might share a goal my dad and I have had for a long time and finally got around to achieving: getting multiple Hobies involved in a mothership operation in remote Canada to hunt Smallmouth and Pike. We'd done a few trips using the fly-in-outpost method (which is of course very fun) but does not afford the tactical advantage that the Hobies present. Remote fish camps typically provide a 14' 9.9 hp aluminum boat which get you around the lakes easily but are simply awful to fish out of.
After months of searching we found a lake in SE Ontario that has almost no shoreline development (protected) but has a couple of small lodges that rent boats and 1 off-grid cabin that we could use for a home base. Minimum boat traffic was of premium importance to us. The lake was far too big to tackle with just the yaks--almost 10 miles from end to end. We rented the cabin and a boat (14' aluminum) for the week--total cost about $500/person--and used the boat to tow 2 fully-loaded Outbacks around the lake. After the first morning playing around with tow configurations, we found out how to do it without issue...we would motor to a cove, anchor the boat and climb into the kayaks to fish for a couple hours. Once we'd fished out the mile or 2 area around the boat, we'd pedal back, tie up the tow lines and motor to a new area.
This was hardcore fishing--6 hours of sleep/night max, up at 4 am and the only downtime was eating or sleeping. We caught between 80-100 fish over the week. Surprisingly the largemouth fishing was by far the most impressive. Smallmouth were in immediate post-spawn and were a bit disappointing--a sentiment unfortunately shared by many in the area that week. We also got plenty of pike and a few walleye; biggest in the 28" range (frankly walleye just aren't that fun to catch and we didn't target them).
Happy to share any lessons learned. Does require a lot of planning and coordination--but what an epic trip.
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Thought I might share a goal my dad and I have had for a long time and finally got around to achieving: getting multiple Hobies involved in a mothership operation in remote Canada to hunt Smallmouth and Pike. We'd done a few trips using the fly-in-outpost method (which is of course very fun) but does not afford the tactical advantage that the Hobies present. Remote fish camps typically provide a 14' 9.9 hp aluminum boat which get you around the lakes easily but are simply awful to fish out of.
After months of searching we found a lake in SE Ontario that has almost no shoreline development (protected) but has a couple of small lodges that rent boats and 1 off-grid cabin that we could use for a home base. Minimum boat traffic was of premium importance to us. The lake was far too big to tackle with just the yaks--almost 10 miles from end to end. We rented the cabin and a boat (14' aluminum) for the week--total cost about $500/person--and used the boat to tow 2 fully-loaded Outbacks around the lake. After the first morning playing around with tow configurations, we found out how to do it without issue...we would motor to a cove, anchor the boat and climb into the kayaks to fish for a couple hours. Once we'd fished out the mile or 2 area around the boat, we'd pedal back, tie up the tow lines and motor to a new area.
This was hardcore fishing--6 hours of sleep/night max, up at 4 am and the only downtime was eating or sleeping. We caught between 80-100 fish over the week. Surprisingly the largemouth fishing was by far the most impressive. Smallmouth were in immediate post-spawn and were a bit disappointing--a sentiment unfortunately shared by many in the area that week. We also got plenty of pike and a few walleye; biggest in the 28" range (frankly walleye just aren't that fun to catch and we didn't target them).
Happy to share any lessons learned. Does require a lot of planning and coordination--but what an epic trip.
IMG_0602.jpg
IMG_0560.jpg
IMG_0562.jpg
IMG_0570.jpg
IMG_0575.jpg
IMG_3358.jpg
IMG_3407.jpg
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