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Earlier this summer, the missus told me she would like to occasionally join me on the water, less to fish and more to take pictures of birds and practice drone photography. Faced with a dilemma of buying her a cheap kayak (that she may never actually use) or giving her my Falcon 11 and upgrading myself, I made a trip down to Big Bass USA and picked up a demo Bonafide RS117 for a great price. Can't say enough good things about the store. Unfortunately, between work, travel, and weather, it had been 3 weeks and I still hadn't taken it out. Didn't help that I got the date of the rockfish moratorium wrong, thinking it was the first of the month rather than the end. I tried to make myself feel better by believing that fishing was probably dead in this heat anyway, but the recent reports and my own experience today prove I was deluding myself.
Following Rob's report, I headed down to the usual spot and launched around 7:30. I had intended to get there a bunch earlier but was out late on a "date" night - tough to get home early when theaters now show 30 minutes of previews and the movie itself is over 2.5 hours.
Anyway, I had a hookup with a 19" rock within 100 feet of the launch and it was steady catching from there. By 9:00 am I had caught over a dozen rock, almost all between 17" - 20" with a couple just topping 23". Bait balls everywhere. The fish got smaller as the sun got higher and the boat traffic really picked up, so I decided to get off the water by 11:00. Ended up with 22 rock and 1 mega white perch in a little over 3 hours - easily my best day of quantity plus quantity this year.
Really like the Bonafide as well. It's super-roomy and crazy stable while still being manageable to haul around. From a paddling perspective, no one would confuse it with a touring kayak, but it's not bad at all given its specs. Hoping it's not another 3 weeks before I take it out again - maybe the perch are still biting.
Following Rob's report, I headed down to the usual spot and launched around 7:30. I had intended to get there a bunch earlier but was out late on a "date" night - tough to get home early when theaters now show 30 minutes of previews and the movie itself is over 2.5 hours.
Anyway, I had a hookup with a 19" rock within 100 feet of the launch and it was steady catching from there. By 9:00 am I had caught over a dozen rock, almost all between 17" - 20" with a couple just topping 23". Bait balls everywhere. The fish got smaller as the sun got higher and the boat traffic really picked up, so I decided to get off the water by 11:00. Ended up with 22 rock and 1 mega white perch in a little over 3 hours - easily my best day of quantity plus quantity this year.
Really like the Bonafide as well. It's super-roomy and crazy stable while still being manageable to haul around. From a paddling perspective, no one would confuse it with a touring kayak, but it's not bad at all given its specs. Hoping it's not another 3 weeks before I take it out again - maybe the perch are still biting.
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