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.

Freshwater bass fishing tandem in the Jackson Kayak Big Tuna

Took out the Big Tuna with my wife and daughter to do some freshwater bass fishing.  I was real curious how well it would handle with both my wife and daughter in the front area with the live well filled with bait fish.

Was a great time between just hanging out and watching my daughter feed crumpled up crackers to the shad and minnows in the live well.  With no holes drilled in the live well area the bait fish stayed alive for the entire trip, I wasnt really keeping track but at least a couple hours.  There were about 1 dozen plus medium shad and 2 dozen minnows.  I really need to get around to putting the holes in the live well.

bait/lure: mostly live shad and threw a slayer SSB occasionally.

conditions: slightly windy nothing difficult to paddle against maybe 5mph, pretty chilly about 50-60 degrees

Ally and Averie with a Bass

Me with a Bass

Overall Ive been pretty impressed with how this boat handles in the face time tandem setup.  I bring one paddle with me when the boat is setup like this so that there is only one paddle to manage in the kayak.    With just me paddling it is pretty easy to maneuver the kayak and get it up to a decent speed with someone up front.  The kayak also stays surprisingly loose which is great for handling with someone up front.  In addition to me paddling in the back at about 200 pounds I have had an up front passenger that weighs 150lbs and also 190lbs.  Im not sure what the combined weight of my wife and daughter were and no, Im not going to ask.... haha.