Once you get a little bit back every creek and river is oaded with trout and they will bite anything. I brought a couple flies with a few feet of line and just hand tossed them in. A fish almost every throw.

^ Either he's talking about 1987 or this guy is much better at fishing than I am. I was just there fishing the Merced for 2 days and couldn't catch anything. I saw plenty of fish, but couldn't get any of them to accept my dinner invitations.

As I've pointed out in previous posts, I'm pretty new to kayak fishing (and fishing in general) - so with that in mind, here's a question:

I decided to try for some stripers tonight in Sausalito (houseboat area), and on my way back in after an hour or so of nothingness, the fish started to go nuts all around me (I'm assuming they were stripers, but I could of course be wrong). First it was 100 feet ahead of me, so I rushed up and started chucking my lure at them... then they were 200 feet behind me, so I turned around and chucked my lure at them again... The action was fast and furious, but I managed a single bite and not much else...

When these fish start to go nuts, what should I do to increase my chances? I'm assuming topwater baits (poppers?) are the way to go, but beyond that I have no strategy and I definitely missed a golden opportunity tonight. Is there a strategy to approach these guys?

^ definitely nice, but far more boat than we'll need.

Maybe some more info would be helpful: probably 80% of the time it will be used for pretty casual lake fishing, and we car top so something pretty light and easily transportable would be ideal.

It's pretty smoky, but not bad enough to chase us away.

http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=78310.0

Awesome, thank you. I did a search before posting but I don't think that thread showed up because it only says "Mendo". Some good info there for sure.

I decided to give it a shot this afternoon, and rockfish felt like it would be a good saltwater cherry-popper so I headed to a nearby jetty. I don't have much saltwater gear so I rigged up a swimbait that I had found on the rocks at some point, and after 45 minutes or so of low confidence trial-and-error, I managed to hook into my first saltwater fish (by hook and line) - a nice lingcod! About 21.997 inches long. It was right on the edge of legal so I played it safe and let it go. Needless to say I'm hooked.

Hey everyone,

I've learned a lot from this forum about crabbing and freshwater kayak fishing, but I've yet to do any saltwater fishing (outside of poke-poling, which I also learned about here (and love)).

I'm looking to leave the kayak at home for a while (for safety purposes) and start to get comfortable with some saltwater fishing. Any tips on a good introductory species or method? Obviously I'd love to start hauling in trophy salmon and halibut, but I imagine something like perch, stripers or rockfish would be more appropriate for a beginner, yes?

I wont ask you to give away your favorite spots, but generally speaking what would you recommend as an introduction to the salt? Species? Location (beach/pier/rocky shore)? Rig? Bait? Any help would be much appreciated!