Fishing

[Vudak]

I picked up my new boat a week ago and put her to good use on Lake Champlain with my father.  I bought the boat in September as a left over from last year and never had her in the water.  It was the longest winter of my life

Considering that I've fished my whole life out of my father's Fisher Hawk 2V, a small 15' crappie style boat with only two small boxes under each seat for storage, this was a huge change.  Can you imagine – it actually starts when you turn the key – every time! It also hasn't sunk yet, the bilge pump works, and when it starts to get warm out and I want to lose my jacket, I get to decide which compartment to store it in, rather than which foot to trip over it as it lays somewhere on the floor.  On the old boat, it was tough to carry more than three rods and you always figured you'd break them.  On this one, I can tuck away 10 in tubes and another however many I'd like on the side (although they do tend to tangle there).

The bad weather gave me a chance to see how she handled higher waves, and it wasn't any problem and we stayed dry.  I had a great time making the longer runs to places I've always heard of but never had the confidence in the old boat to go to.  





And just for some perspective, here's an old photo showing how much room I had to work with on the old boat – this is like night and day.



Unfortunately, due to a large cold front that moved in, it was hard to put fish in the boat until we found one particular rocky point that held a school of large bass.  We pulled over 20 largemouths out over 3-4lbs over the course of two days, and had some pike hit as well – it made the trip.





This is shaping up to be a pretty good summer

[TheBug]

That is awesome Vudak. Nice boat, enjoy!  Get out often, the damn summer goes by real fast!! 

[mbailey]

Awesome Vudak, Nice boat.........Lund makes a really nice hull on their boats, really rides the larger waves with ease.

I know what your saying about no room, I started out fishing with my dad in a 12ft Jon boat....Decided when i got mine, id have some room.....Picked up a 18ft Crestliner last year for the lake...Compared to that jon boat, i feel like i could do laps around my boat....lol

[homersipes]

we had a 6' john boat when I was a kid, then I had the bank for many years later, cant get much more room than that then I picked up a 6' john boat and motor from a local scrapper for $60, now I got a 17' stingray, don't do much fishin from it use the john boat and canoe for that mainly.  Can get in really shallow water   very nice boat Vudak maybe will have to haul my boat up this summer and do some fishin

[Flench]

Nice boat Vudak . I like to have a set up like that with a small inboard / outboard in it /

Nice fish JimmyC . Is that Beeliners in with the snapper ?

[JimmyC]

Great set up Vu..plenty room for beer...I likeee

Flench, never heard of beeliners,  I think all ours where snapper, smallest 30cm except a john dory and 2 blue maumau and a couple of  kahawai (found only in New Zealand and Australia. Similar to trout in shape, but no relation. Very lively fighting fish, spectacular on light tackle. Fished on spinning gear, bait tackle and saltwater fly.
Average size: 40-50cm, reaching 70cm. Weight to over 8kg (17lb) )
a guy on board caught 2 blue maumau.. he had all the gear..we where using squid, bonito, pilchards..he had that dry bait stuff..Softbaits & Soft Plastic baits
all the gear...caught nothing..but he was the one closest to the rod when the kingfish struck so he did bring that home...and had a fishing story to dine out on for quite awhile.

I looked on line and the Kingfish is a relation to your amberjack

wiki quote....`The yellowtail amberjack or great amberjack, Seriola lalandi, buri or hiramasa[1] is a large fish found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It can be divided into three subspecies:

    The California yellowtail, Seriola lalandi dorsalis
    The southern yellowtail, or in New Zealand and Australia the yellowtail kingfish or kingfish[2] S. l. lalandi
    The Asian yellowtail, S. l. aureovitta.
`
almost went out   fishing again at the weekend but a storm blew through..waiting with baited breath (JK) till I can wrangle myself onto another fishing trip soon
<S>Jimmy

[Flench]

Beeliners usually hang around with the red snapper . Until the sharks come in . Back in the late 70's we got to keep all we could get on board , snapper , kingfish and had a girl catch a 40 pound  lobster full of egg's but she would not through it back . I went out every night . If I remember right it was $5.00 for a 6 hour tripe . Wish I would of had the money to have some of the kingfish mounted but I was making money selling them at the time . My x wife thought I was working laying brick , lol .

[mbailey]

My x wife thought I was working laying brick , lol .

How did you explain coming home every night smelling like fish ? 

[Flench]

How did you explain coming home every night smelling like fish ? 

I told her witch I did . I would go to the fishing peer after I got off the boat and sold my fish . That's where the smell came from . What I told her anyway .

[RotBaron]

Congrats everyone on your recent catch(s).    Fishing thread, yay  

Jimmy C:

I'll have to look up Kingfish, I'm not familiar with them. However it must be some type of a Jack, it looks very similar to yellowtail. I do almost all of my fishing these days offshore out of San Diego on 1.5 to 3 day boats. It's widely known out there that when the yellowtail get up to and above 20lbs or so, it becomes an entirely different fight. "Home guards" as they are called can also be very tricky. They will often be found around a kelp paddie and have the tendency to run for the kelp and tie you up/break off. They got that big for a reason we say...If found near structure, like they can be found off Catalina, they often head for the rocks and snap you off. That's how they got the name home guards. The following pic isn't my biggest YT but its one that fits in this category, forearms/biceps burning, was on 20# line.




Dang was going to post a pic, but bloodydecks apparently was hacked, lost servers and is undergoing a massive new website re-deployment. Note to self *** don't rely on a website to keep my pics for me for the rest of my life...

Oh well, it was about a 28#'er 

I'm really hoping some of those pics aren't lost forever.

[Flench]

I would troll for kingfish until I got where I was going to fish on the bottom . Had a friend that dumped a bunch of old car's that we go fish at . The only thing was it took 4 hour's to get to the hot spot . You don't see many kingfish that big now much more plus there's a creel on them now and snapper too .

[mbailey]

Hey JimmyC,

Not sure if this radio program is near you, but I found it the other day on my iphone (i drive alot for work and like to listen to internet radio)

Ive started listening to this......really enjoying it....

http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/central_coast_the_big_fish/?site=centralcoast&program=central_coast_the_big_fish

[RotBaron]

Well here's a couple of a "home guard" not the biggest...still looking for those  








Notice the similarity between the head of your Kingfish and the Yellowtail. This fish is the California Yellowtail, don't know how much difference there is between it and the one caught in the Gulf or lower Atlantic. My sushi lover friends say there is a difference between Hamachi's...

[RotBaron]

This I missed, sorry:

I looked on line and the Kingfish is a relation to your amberjack

wiki quote....`The yellowtail amberjack or great amberjack, Seriola lalandi, buri or hiramasa[1] is a large fish found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It can be divided into three subspecies:

    The California yellowtail, Seriola lalandi dorsalis
    The southern yellowtail, or in New Zealand and Australia the yellowtail kingfish or kingfish[2] S. l. lalandi
    The Asian yellowtail, S. l. aureovitta.
`

<S>Jimmy

What (live, artificial...) were you trolling when it hit?

I looked around a bit, of course as with all fish/fishing, where we reside has a lot to do with our name labeling of fish. It would appear that what you know as a kingfish I know as a yellowtail, that it is indeed of the jack family, and according to the Monteraybay aquarium, is sold throughout the world as hamachi for sushi. There are some differences in the appearance/structure of some of the fins comparatively, but these fish are 1000's of miles away...I missed noticing you mention New Zealand, musta been tired or something.

However, the most important question is did you eat the cheeks?  They're the best part of that fish. I bbq YT whole and over charcoal, let the skin peel off to the grate and eat from the carcass, it's awesome that way. Just rub salt and olive oil over skin to start and viola. That is why you see me with a whole fish standing in my kitchen ~500 miles from where I caught it. Tuna n dorado (mahi) I just have filleted.

[homersipes]

cruising on the Connecticut river last weekend before winter came back   didn't catch anything but went night fishing and caught some bullhead catfish