Looks like the year isn’t over for me yet. Got a call from Brandon White early Sunday asking me to fish with him at the CBBT on Monday morning. As Chief Angler of Tidalfish.com and Lateral Line, inc., it’s hard to imagine an angler who’s more dialed into what the fish are doing on the Chesapeake Bay than him, so when he says the bite is on, it’s on.

It’s been about a year since I’ve updated this blog. It’s early December, snowing outside, and I’m not sure if I’m going to get to fish before the new year. I’m trying to remember all the times I fished in 2009. My best guess right now is that I went around 20 times. Between 5-10 trips less than I usually take, but this year I became a homeowner and that ate into fishing time.

A few days ago I went to Unicorn Lake on the Eastern Shore for a late season pickerel trip. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and before I left home the wind was blowing close to 20mph. I had the day off and just wanted to get out of the house to take advantage of some time to myself but I wasn’t too optimistic. The first real cold front of November had swept in a few days before and I imagined that the fishing would be a little off. Because the winds were so strong I opted to leave my kayak at home and to focus on the shorelines of the lake and the spillway stream.

The fish finder I chose to install on my kayak was a Humminbird Matrix 12. It was about $50 more expensive than your average fish finder, but the display was a lot larger and it had the option for a GPS plug-in – a nice feature that I might add in the future.

I’ve seen a number of different ways to mount a fish finder on a Native Ultimate 12 and most involve mounting the base of the fish finder to the left or right gunwale. One thing I liked from my old SOT was having an obvious center location to mount electronics and I wanted to apply that layout to my U12. I liked the symmetry of having the fish finder in the center of the boat, and I wanted to keep the sides clear of add-ons to facilitate getting in and out.

The open hull design of a Native Ultimate 12 allows an angler more quick storage than a traditional SOT design. Because the seat is raised above a storage tray, you can tuck things underneath the seat itself, to the left and right of where you’re seated, and behind the seat. On a typical outing I’ll have a big fly box in the tray to my right and a small lure binder to my left. Behind me will be my anchor and line, along with a small soft sided cooler tucked under my fish finder up front. Back when I had my SOT, all of those things would be piled in my milk crate and in my tankwell. In my T140, reaching everything was somewhat difficult, but transporting everything was easy. Early on I found that with my U12 the opposite was true – all of my tackle was easy to reach, but organizing and transporting everything without my milk crate was difficult.

This past Saturday I went back to Hoopers Island to fish the upper bridge. I had done really well on the lower bridge a few weeks ago, so I wanted to try the upper one to see what it was like. It’s a smaller bridge, so there were less bridge pilings to fish. There were some very deep holes there though and the current really poured through the narrows between the Honga River and the Chesapeake Bay. The tide was going out when I put in. I certainly marked plenty of fish.

After a long weekend of family obligations, not fishing, and housework I woke up on Monday morning to gray skies, no wind, and temps in the 60s. I promptly called in sick and called my friend David to see if he’d be interested in playing hooky too. It didn’t take much convincing to get him to call out work so after a quick trip to Bass Pro Shop and a bite to eat we were on our way east to the Chesapeake Bay.

The plan was to scope out conditions while crossing the bay bridge. If the water was calm, we’d put in at the beach by Hemmingway’s restaurant and jig the bridge pilings. If it looked too rough, we’d continue on to Eastern Bay and the Narrows where it would be more protected.

Fished the bridges at Hooper’s Island on Sunday. It was just after high tide when I pulled up at 1pm. I ate lunch and took my time unloading the truck. Beautiful afternoon – clear and sunny, temps in the 60s and no wind. There might’ve been 2 other boats out on the water and 1 other angler fishing from shore. Not bad for a Sunday.

Transducer came loose and wasn’t reading accurately. Will have to remount it once I get home. Paddled down to the bridge and saw that the current was really ripping through there. Made a few casts and missed two bites early. Nothing for the next 2 hours. Tried a few different areas of the bridge but might try exploring more next time. After a while I even tried bottom fishing with fishbites but still nada.

Rigging a Native Ultimate 12 is a subtle affair. At first I was intimidated with all of the open space, the lack of below deck storage, and the absence of a console or deck. But that’s the point! If I had wanted a SOT, I would’ve bought a SOT. I wanted to keep the design clean, but still have all of the storage and functionality that I was used to from a SOT. So I knew that the best job would be simple, and one that looked like not much was done.

I lived in a studio apartment for a while and one trick to living in a small space is to make each piece of furniture serve multiple purposes. A bed can be seating. A table can be a desk. The same principle holds true in kayak rigging. Because of the minimalist design of the Ultimate, I wanted each add-on to ideally serve more than one purpose. The bow and stern skirts keep water out and also provide storage. The bow skirt also serves as my paddle holder. I tuck a small wooden trout net in the rear skirt netting too sometimes.

Having been sick the previous week and weekend – my first truly free weekend since the wedding and my retirement from rugby – I was itching to get out despite hurricane Kyle being right off the coast. I scrambled to get my kayak ready for a serious trip – mainly installing the fish finder and planning my day on the water based off of some info from Capt Matt Tawes. High tide wasn’t until around noon so I didn’t have to rush to get down there, nice since I was up pretty late working on the kayak.

The rain was off and on Friday night and Saturday morning as I drove down, but by the time I got into Somerset County it was a steady downpour. I took my time at the park trying to wait out the rain: I checked in at the ranger’s station and bought a map, I unloaded my truck and loaded my kayak with gear, but the rain was still pouring and there was nothing left to do but just go.