Kayak Fishing For… Offshore Mahi-Mahi?!?!

I’ll admit it right up front: I am not an incredibly good kayak angler. I spend most of my time on larger boats, and my kayak fishing experience is quite limited. I do know a few true kayak fishing sharpies, though, and when I took one of them offshore to bail for mahi-mahi, at one point he turned to me and said “I’d just LOVE to do this from a kayak!” Fast forward a year, and we’ve bent the arm of another inveterate kayak angler, loaded a 10’6″ Old Town Topwater PDL onto my 22′ Glacier Bay, and pointed the bow for the horizon.

Some 30 miles later, we started tossing fish chunks next to commercial fishing gear floats. We caught a fish here and a fish there, but considering what an ordeal it was getting the kayak in and out of the boat, we figured we’d keep our powder dry until we located a big school of fish. Around noon it happened. With 30 to 50 mahi slashing through our chunks, we lowered the kayak over the side. One after the other, we took turns catching mahi from the yak. It was a total blast – and we learned a few lessons, too:

• Safety measures: stay relatively close to the boat, and always wear your PFD. We rigged ours with a floating/waterproof VHF, as well.
• Landing a mahi in a kayak is virtually impossible, because as soon as you get it in the boat it flips right back out. Instead, a much more effective method was to hook up the fish, bring it in close, and paddle back to the “mothership” boat. Then someone on board could scoop it in the net.
• We found that fewer fish were lost if we never took out the hook and instead handed the rod up, as the fish was taken aboard. Only once the fish was in the boat did we remove the hook.
• Mahi are not usually spooky fish, and having the kayak directly overhead didn’t affect them one bit. In fact, we caught 11 from the school before they began getting hesitant about taking baits.
• Trolling artificial squid was almost as effective as dropping squid chunks early in the game, but after catching a few, they only wanted bait. When they got really spooky, a whole squid hooked through the tip of the mantle was the only thing they’d touch.
• Finally, and most importantly, we discovered that catching mahi from a kayak is a TON of fun – especially when the fish jumped out of the water, and went well above head level. When’s the last time you looked up, to watch your leaping quarry?!?