I was on one of my favorite forums recently and one of the new members, a new comer to kayak fishing in the surf asked for some advice on how to get in and out thru the surf without getting rolled. I see a lot of questions about this so I decided to ad some advise on my blog regarding this.
One of my fishing partners, rolled on a baby wave!
Here are my suggestions for getting thru the surf zone without getting chewed up and spit out!
First, unless there is some really good action out there I don't usually try to fish the surf when there are some serious breakers.
Going out is no big deal. the key is just to stay perpendicular with the breaking wave. If you get a little sideways your in trouble. This is not to hard to do, even in pretty large breakers. It is the ext that gets most people. If you are fishing a 12-14'+ yak, leaning back will not shift enough weight to keep the nose up. If you have a shorter yak it makes all the difference in the world.
Timing is important to ext but only if the surf is breaking with one or two breakers at a time. If there are 3-4 sets and they start 100 yds out, your not going to be able to get in fast enough to avoid taking one in the back. Then it lifts the back of the yak, the nose digs in, you go side ways and your up side down.
There are three methods to deal with this that you can try but each takes a different skill level.
Very rough surf:
1- get into waste deep water and bail out, grab the back of the boat, hang on and ride it in. works great. Not cool but it works.
2.- you can try a brace but it is difficult to perfect. check this out on line but you will have to practice it a lot. I avoid it personally.
3. Keep straight by braking on the opposite of the direction the nose is starting to go. The wave gets the rear going faster than the front when the nose get slightly out of perpendicular with the wave. This makes the nose start to come around and you ge rolled. If the nose starts to come left, brake on the right by putting your paddle in the water until the yak straightens back out. It is not nearly as hard to do as bracing and leaning into the wave.
Obviously, you need to have all your gear leashed but if it is real rough i recommend you bail out and float the boat the rest of the way in. Your body will act like a drift sock and the yak will not turn over. That's a major plus and saves your equipment.
One thing that is very important during the summer months is to keep a close eye on the weather! Afternoon thunder storms can build up fast and sneak up on you even faster! Also, surf conditions can change in as little as 30 minutes and be completely different from what you launched into.
Last year my fishing partner Rick and I got caught sleeping. Man was that a serious mistake! Rick was hooked to a 125lb. tarpon that was headed due east (away from the hill) as hard as he could go. About the time we got the tarpon landed we heard a rumble of thunder! Back inland there was a thunder storm coming and it did not look gentle.
We took a quick photo, stowed our gear and took off for the beach. The tarpon had pulled us so far out it took 15 minutes of paddling as hard as we could just to get back to 45' of water. About then the wind hit us and within 5 minutes it was blowing 40+ mph and pouring rain. The swell went from flat to 4' just that quick also. Waves were breaking a foor and a half over the bow. All we could do was stay square with the waves and paddle as hard as possible, hoping we could out last the storm. Luckily, I had sonar and was able to read the depth once in a while other wise there was no was to know if you were getting closer or further from the beach. After about 20 minutes the conditions started to ease up and I could tell we were going to make it out alive.
Once we had the boats back on the beach, we just sat there, rested and drank our water ration. We joked about how we'd rather not do that again and brushed off the hole incident but both of us knew what a serious circumstances we had just braved.
The thing I remember the most was the intensity of the wind blowing on the paddle each time it came out of the water! Incredible!
Good Luck,
Larry S.
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