Mosquito Lagoon with a couple friends interested in Kayak Fishing

Nothing too fascinating caught today but figured Id post the video anyway since I had the footage :P just one minute long.

Kayak fishing even on the slowest smallest days still beats work I think Brendan and Patrick will agree.

Fun day, we will have to get the big ones next time.

Another night trip in the Mosquito Lagoon Tandem in the Big Tuna

While wondering when my next outing would be I received a call from Austin and Paul asking if I would like to do some night fishing with them in Titusville.  I had two of my friends Brendan and Mike recently ask me if they could check out the sport of kayak fishing so I decided tonight was as good a night as any other.  I ended up riding tandem with my buddy Mike and my other friend Brendan paddled a borrowed a Tarpon 160.  Little did I know my valentines day would come early... haha

It was a cold cold night when we decided to start our late night adventure.  We saw a few kayak anglers we knew on the water and broke off and met back up with them several times through the night.  For the most part everyone was skunked except on tiny trout.  We used an array of live and dead bait (no artificial bait) and finally my buddy Brendan hooked up to something.  This was his first hook up ever in a kayak so he at first exclaimed  "I think Im hooked up to that flats boat!!" but then he realized he was hooked up to a bull red.  After about a 20 minute battle he landed his 32" redfish.

Soon after the wind picked up and it felt like the temperature dropped about 30 degrees.  After freezing the whole way back to the put in paddling as fast as we could we were strapping the boats to our trucks and looking for who was open at 2am for a late dinner.  Check out the pictures below,

Brendan with his first Bull Red and also FIRST fish caught as a Kayak
Fisherman.  Hopefully everything from here on out is bigger! haha

Picture taken of Me and Mike in the Jackson Big Tuna from a Malibu
Stealth 14 captained by Austin.  Paul decided riding tandem is such a
magical moment it calls for a box of valentines day candy.

Jackson Big Tuna NEW Jelly Jon Banner

Not particularly interesting but made a new banner with the Jackson Big Tuna for my forum signature.

I am in the SCKA (Space Coast Kayak Angler) group, the OKFC (Orlando Kayak Fishing Club) and on yakangler.com.

Mosquito Lagoon at Night - Tandem in the Big Tuna Jackson Kayak

who: My kayak angler buddy Justin called me and said he wanted to hit the lagoon at night time (Wednesday Dec. 19th). He couldn't get his kayak on the water so he asked me if I would mind going tandem in the Big Tuna.  I have not had a chance to hit a lake with my wife in the Jackson Big Tuna yet so I figured this would be a great opportunity to see how this boat performs with another experienced angler.  I did not feel like moving the seat holders from solo mode (since Im generally by myself) so that meant the front seat was in the "face time" position.  In addition to us we ended up meeting up with Chuck and Pepi at the put-in.

conditions: There was pretty much no wind at all and the current was just about nonexistent for most of the night.  We were on the water from about 7:30pm until about 1:00am

bait/lure: live shrimp

After slow drifting and working an area typically known to produce a bunch of us had our bait taken but spit out a few times.  By the time we packed up and left (after about 4 hours) Pepi and I both caught some dirty sail cats with Chuck catching one redfish and Justin was the real winner of the night catching two pretty big redfish (pictures below next paragraph).

thoughts on the Jackson Big Tuna in Tandem:  Since we were in the face time position only one of us could effectively paddle at a time.  This was actually good to know because now when I go with my wife Ally I for sure intend to only bring one paddle.  Additionally access to the live well would be pretty much impossible to the front person if they are facing forward. Other then that the boat paddled pretty well with the two of us, Id say between us and our gear plus the live well filled we had close to 430-440 pounds in the boat(maybe more).    Im real curious to try this boat in regular tandem but I was pleased with how it went in the facetime position.  I will probably post a more in depth facetime tandem review with pictures when I go out with my wife on a lake.

Justin's first Red of the night in the Jackson Big Tuna.
Check out that Bigfin Apparel performance shirt

Justin's second Red of the night in the Jackson Kayak
Big Tuna

Picked up the NEW Jackson Big Tuna kayak

So Ive been in the market for a new fishing kayak lately and since Im somewhat partial to Jackson since Ive loved their whitewater boats so much since the company’s inception I decided to check out the Big Tuna.

Ive had the Cuda before but since I do offshore kayak fishing I really liked the idea of having a built in live well.  In addition to a live well itd be nice to take my wife Ally out with me in the same boat when we do freshwater so its easier to talk and hang out with our 3 year old daughter.  When I saw the Big Tuna could turn into a capable solo boat I knew I had to check it out.

Review with video to come.

Will do a comparison of the boats Ive paddled to this one to see if that helps anyone relate to it more.  I will compare it to my Tarpon, Cuda 14 and Stealth 14.  Obviously all of this will be based on my opinions and experiences only...

Addictive Fishing Tournament and Barbie/Princess rod fishing

Decided to try making a fishing video from the little bit of video I collected at the fishing tournament that I entered with Nick, Justin and a few other fishing buddies.  Still pretty new to creating video on fishing trips so I dont often remember to turn the camera on, the trip down and rigging part is much longer then the actual video of fishing.  Oh well, tried to make it enjoyable anyway.  Many fish were caught but none were very big or notable.

Jelly Jon blog created

Decided to start a blog to document fish caught as well as anything else I find interesting mostly for my own amusement.  If anyone else finds this interesting and follows super... If not thats fine just fine.

Also first post and test post now Im going to add a picture.