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Down tide fish from a sit on top kayak
This way of fishing is probably the easier way of fishing
off a kayak but the rules are just the same for anchoring.
The good thing about down tide fishing is that you can
use a lot more different rigs then you can when up tide fishing.
See rigs page.
Anchoring
The differences between fishing of a boat and a kayak is that when you are anchored up on a boat you are likely to anchor from the bow this give you a more stable boat and you are going to have more room to play the fish as most fish will swim off down tide from the boat and it helps when landing a fish as you don’t have to drag the fish under the hull and pass the prop.
When down tide fishing from a sit on top kayak I find it best to anchor from the stern of the kayak. This will give you the best seating position and stability when playing a decent fish as you will be facing the right way (down tide). Let me explain that.
Let say you have caught a 10lb fish and it has put up a good fight and it has given up the fight 50 yards away from your kayak and you have anchor from the bow and the fish is down tide of you. You now have to reel in the fish facing the wrong way not being able to see the fish or react properly to the fish if it decides to have another run.
You may have to sit side on in your kayak in big swells to play the fish to the kayak some people don’t like to sit side on as they think that they may loss stability or just don’t feel comfortable sitting that way.
So why anchor from the stern off your kayak well lets take the same 10lb fish. You will be in the best position possible to fight the fish. If the fish should go down tide of you then you will facing the fish and you will be able to use all own weight and your back to pull against it or just to hold the fish there and you will be able to see what the fish is doing all the time.
So what if the fish swims up tide from you then it is just a case of keeping the strain on the fish till it comes back to you with the tide. so as you can see anchoring from the stern has its advantage.
What is down tide fishing
and how do we do it The first thing is unlike up tide fishing you don’t have to cast out away from your kayak as you can let the tide flow take the bait down tide as you lower it to the sea bed. Once the weight as hit the sea bed you can do two things.
One is let out some line off your spool to create a bow this will help the lead to hold bottom or you can keep your line a little more straight and lift the rod tip a little and let out more line out so that the lead will bump down tide of you, this way you cover a lot more ground giving you a greater chance of catching a fish
 Rod and reel
The rod we use for this type of fishing are your every day boat rod, they tend to be around the 6 foot but they do come in different classers from around 6lb to 50lb you can get heavier rods but I don’t think you would use them in the U.K off a kayak. I use a 10lb to 20lb class rod for nearly all my kayak fishing and that is heavy enough to pull in a good size tope or conger from the deep.
The reel, it all depends on what species you are targeting and the type of ground you’re fishing over, let’s say you are fishing for tope over clean ground I would use a 6500 reel loaded with 20lb braid this would be ample. Or we go for a conger and we are fishing over rocks, then I would probably use a 7000 reel loaded with 30lb braid. But I try to fish as light as possible this way you get a lot more sport out of the fish.
rigs
There is any number of rigs you can use but I tend to keep it simple.
This is the part that you want to be right because if you get this wrong you could be fishing all day and not catch the species you are fishing for.
Let’s start with the main line (reel line) and work down to the hook. What I use is a lead slider on my main line with a snap link on it so you can change the size of lead easy, then below that I put a bead, this will help to protect your knot that the swivel is tied on with. Then between your main line and the hook trace (snood) I put a swivel on, the size of this depends on the size of species you going for. When we get to the hook trace again this all depends on the species. I use mono for all my hook traces even tope as it give you a little bit of stretch and it is kinder to the fish. And now last of all but the most important is the hook. There are three things I work on here and that is, match the bait to the fish and the hook to the bait it’s no good putting a full squid on a size 5/0 hook and hoping to catch a dab. For more boat rigs
click on this link.
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