Recently we (Joey and Jon) went on a kayak fishing trip to Florida. We spent a day at Cedar Key fishing with Ken Daubert, author of "The Kayak Fishing Revolution." Ken showed us around one of his favorite areas and it was a new experience for us fishing grassy, tropical flats. We learned a few new techniques and used lures that will have applications at other places.
The weedless minnows were especially good. Unfortunately they'd had a great deal of rain in that part of Florida for the past couple months prior to our trip. Because of this the water temps were well below where they should have been. This resulted in abnormal fishing for the area. We did manage to catch our first Redfish and it was a blast. We were very impressed with their power. I never had a striper tow me as fast as my first red did Besides Redfish we reacquainted ourselves with some old friends that I hadn't caught since Baja and Joey since Costa Rica, Ladyfish and small Jack Crevalle.
It's a shame the there weren't any large jacks around because they are my favorite sport fish. The power of jacks is hard to describe and I look forward to catching large ones from the kayak. We also caught another new species for us, sea trout, also known as southern weakfish. We were hoping to get a shot at some Tarpon as they average 75 to 125 pounds in the area, unfortunately the cooler temps had them missing. Ken says that he now uses light hooks for Tarpon. He hooks up and fights them for a short while and then puts enough pressure on so that the hook straightens out. If he doesn't, he said that one fish would take a few hours to land and tow you quite some distance. We got a taste of southern flats fishing and look forward to spending a lot more time doing it.