CITY FISHING: Kayak Fishing to Glory

It was another wonderful day on the water this week. Since we perfected our easy and safe anchoring technique, and I switched to the 1.5 lb. anchor instead of the big 3 lb. anchor things have been really enjoyable. Given that we fish in the mighty St. Lawrence river, it used to be very tiring to paddle the whole time. Although trolling while in the kayak was pretty successful it was also very tiring. Now we can paddle up river a bit, anchor and fish, then lift anchor and drift down with the current and reanchor and fish as many times as we want. We are now definitely spending more time actually casting, and therefore catching fish, than we are paddling. We caught a a good amount of decent sized smallmouth bass (micropterus dolomieu), including an 18-incher on my first cast! Ryan also caught a trio of nice sized walleyes (sander vitreus). The short summer fishing season is already winding down. And given the unusually cold weather we had and high water we certainly did not get a chance to fish as much as previous years. In any case, I plan to make the most of the few last days of warm weather and kayak fish as much as I can. Here are some of the highlights from this past week: