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A couple Saturday's ago I spent the day on the Susquehanna in a guided fishing class with Juan Veruete of Kayak Fish PA.
For those of you with ADHD, like me, I'll just skip to the chase. If you don't know how to effectively fish a river in your kayak and you can get to Juan...do so...ASAP. It is well worth the time.
We started the day with Juan going over paddling techniques and his approach to establishing and refining the day's pattern. The paddling advice, tips and coaching were particularly helpful for me.
As we worked our way down the float Juan showed me how to plan my moves from one area of the river to another to maximize the time fishing the most likely water. He also went over several important safety tips as the opportunities presented themselves.
So let's get to the fishing. We pretty quickly established that smallies were hammering spinnerbaits in front of ledge trenches and boulders at the end of pools. I should add that a bonus of spending the day with Juan is that I now understand what the preceding sentence means. I was throwing a War Eagle Finesse with a white Winco curly tail trailer. Nine times out of ten, if they hit it, it was within five cranks of the handle. All of the fish pictured were caught on the Spinnerbait
Now early in the day I lost a big fish. I could tell it was a big fish because Juan seemed sick to his stomach
As we went through another couple promising areas Juan set up my float and told me to keep on my toes because we were coming up on some really likely spots. Sure enough, a couple casts in, the spinnerbait got slammed the second it hit the water. I set the hook (much better this time) and after a few seconds a big old jump out of the water. I'd be lying if I said i remembered anything else...I was pretty much only focused on keeping a bend in the rod and not losing this fish. Well Juan scooped her up and I have a new personal best smallie at 18.5"
Ain't she purty...
This was an absolutely perfect fall day on the river. I didn't even mention that it rained heavy a couple of times while we were out there. The wind and the bite were also tough at times. I didn't mention it because it really only made the day more fun. Some other things I saw during the day included a bald eagle, and a small musky (24") that just crushed Juan's bait before taking off with the leader and everything connected to it. It really is the best classroom around.
I will be booking some more time with Juan in the near future, but this time I'm going to use him to get some friends hooked because i need to create more accomplices...I mean fishing buddies.
For those of you with ADHD, like me, I'll just skip to the chase. If you don't know how to effectively fish a river in your kayak and you can get to Juan...do so...ASAP. It is well worth the time.
We started the day with Juan going over paddling techniques and his approach to establishing and refining the day's pattern. The paddling advice, tips and coaching were particularly helpful for me.
As we worked our way down the float Juan showed me how to plan my moves from one area of the river to another to maximize the time fishing the most likely water. He also went over several important safety tips as the opportunities presented themselves.
So let's get to the fishing. We pretty quickly established that smallies were hammering spinnerbaits in front of ledge trenches and boulders at the end of pools. I should add that a bonus of spending the day with Juan is that I now understand what the preceding sentence means. I was throwing a War Eagle Finesse with a white Winco curly tail trailer. Nine times out of ten, if they hit it, it was within five cranks of the handle. All of the fish pictured were caught on the Spinnerbait
Now early in the day I lost a big fish. I could tell it was a big fish because Juan seemed sick to his stomach
As we went through another couple promising areas Juan set up my float and told me to keep on my toes because we were coming up on some really likely spots. Sure enough, a couple casts in, the spinnerbait got slammed the second it hit the water. I set the hook (much better this time) and after a few seconds a big old jump out of the water. I'd be lying if I said i remembered anything else...I was pretty much only focused on keeping a bend in the rod and not losing this fish. Well Juan scooped her up and I have a new personal best smallie at 18.5"
Ain't she purty...
This was an absolutely perfect fall day on the river. I didn't even mention that it rained heavy a couple of times while we were out there. The wind and the bite were also tough at times. I didn't mention it because it really only made the day more fun. Some other things I saw during the day included a bald eagle, and a small musky (24") that just crushed Juan's bait before taking off with the leader and everything connected to it. It really is the best classroom around.
I will be booking some more time with Juan in the near future, but this time I'm going to use him to get some friends hooked because i need to create more accomplices...I mean fishing buddies.
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