Pulled away from the bank of KARS Park at 7:00 am ready for a long day of exploring. Water was like glass and we could see about 6 other yakers in the area. Not much bait was busting where we put in so we didn't bother casting netting. We decided to drift away from the treeline and work north through all the spoil islands. On the way to the first island we had our fill of undersize trout. As we worked our way north we saw major topwater action heading our way so we grabbed our topwater and laid into some hard hitting ladies. No live bait, but we had cut bait now. Working around the islands we hit a few more trout, but otherwise things were pretty quite as the day got hotter and hotter. When we hit about due west of the air force station wedecided it was time to head back over to the west bank and work south to home. About five minutes in to the journey one of the chains on my Hobie pedals breaks loose and I am dead in the water. No problem I am carrying a spare chain. I tie on to my brother and he pulls me along while I try to tear apart and rebuild without losig anything in to the water. We get to the west bank and just as I finish up my repair my brother hits the biggest trout of the day. A whopping 15.5". He tried to release it for another day, but that trout just didn't want to revive so it went in the bag. The best part is that while he had his head down tring to save his fish I was working south blind casting into the weeds. Finally my lure got slammed and I was hooked up. After a couple minutes of give and take I finally had a beatiful red at my side. Measured up at 29.5", my first overslot red is in the books.
At this point the wind is really starting to blow and the waves are already getting big. We were having trouble staying deep enough the way we were pushing into the shallows. At this point we are four miles from the truck and the conditions are bad enough that we can't really fish so we decide to cruise home instead. On the way back I look up and see a big patch of red. A nice school was right under me before I even noticed them. About ten seconds later they noticed me and moved off to the north. I was just as excited to make eye contact as catching one earlier. We pushed hard just to make any ground. At our 5mph pace we were only moving 1.8mph. To make things worse about a mile from home my brothers kayak gets a breach in the hull. He had to bail it out once before we could continue and was almost at sinking point again when we got to shore. With one boat out of commission we had to cancel our trip into the ML that we had planned for the next day. All in all we had 13 hours of fishing and learned a few things in the process. Hopefully next time we will have a better idea of how to get on the schools.
