Do you prefer wading to floating?

[Flysmallie]

On 4/3/2021 at 1:04 PM, MoCarp said:

You can wade and float, best of both worlds....can’t cover water too fast so a days float only a 5th of what you normally bite off in a canoe....pits can be fun, even tubed TR a couple times....

My dad started pulling me behind his tube when I was 8. When I was 9 he would unhook me occasionally. By the time I was 10 I was on my own. Loved fishing out of those tubes. That’s why I don’t mind fishing sitting down. Not my preference but I learned to bass fish sitting on my butt so it really doesn’t bother me. 

[Al Agnew]

Well, they ain't as cheap as an inner tube, but if want something that's like tube fishing only a heck of a lot better, get a Water Master one person raft.  Or one of the other brands that are very similar.  This is the ONLY watercraft I've ever used that makes it exceedingly easy to fly fish from the craft by yourself.  It's a big, oval-shaped "tube" with a platform on the rear part of the oval hole in the middle that you sit on, so you sit a lot higher, out of the water, but with your feet dangling in the water.  You use swim fins to kick yourself around and keep yourself in position to fish, hands free.  You can have a stripping basket across the front that is an accessory, but I don't use it.  When you come to places shallow enough to wade, you just stand up in the hole...don't have to worry about the thing drifting away because it still surrounds you.  If you need to go somewhere faster and easier than what you can do kicking with the swim fins, you just raise your feet out of the water and onto a strap going across the front, and use the attached oars.  The only drawback is trying to walk in shallow water with the swim fins on.  And oh, yeah, it's not the best thing to use on really windy days.  But other than that, it's SWEET.  I use mine out in Montana on the Yellowstone River, where it's the perfect one person fishing craft, nothing else comes close.  It wouldn't be quite as good on Ozark streams because there's a lot of almost dead water where you'd have to turn around and kick yourself backwards to go down the pool fishing, but I've really thought about getting one for Missouri anyway.  It also fits into the bed of my pickup blown up and ready to fish, and only weighs about 38 pounds.

[fishinwrench]

4 hours ago, BadKarma said:

I'm getting a little long in the tooth and have a few health issues and am thinking someone to fish with would be a benefit.

If any of my friends or family wanted me along just so they'd have someone to carry their @$$ out when they flop....... I'd tell them to KMA !    😂

 

[tjm]

23 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

But after fishing by myself for 50 years from a canoe, I can do very well fishing while paddling.  I may be a world champion one-handed paddler.

My picture of this is you hold the rod in one hand to cast, crank the reel with the other  hand and paddle the boat with your third hand? Or are you just holding the rod and paddle and kinda trolling? I've never been able to figure this out.

[fishinwrench]

7 minutes ago, tjm said:

My picture of this is you hold the rod in one hand to cast, crank the reel with the other  hand and paddle the boat with your third hand? Or are you just holding the rod and paddle and kinda trolling? I've never been able to figure this out.

Nah,. You sit your sculling paddle across your lap, and pause occasionally to right your drift.   Or set yourself up between casts.

Easily doable when slinging spinnerbaits, crankbaits, ect.   But a real PIA when trying to tickle a jig/worm slowly along the bottom.  

[drew03cmc]

29 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Nah,. You sit your sculling paddle across your lap, and pause occasionally to right your drift.   Or set yourself up between casts.

Easily doable when slinging spinnerbaits, crankbaits, ect.   But a real PIA when trying to tickle a jig/worm slowly along the bottom.  

This is something I have discovered. The more I kayak fish, the more power fishing I do. When I stop to wade or rest is when the jigs or finesse stuff comes out. I can fish a fluke decently from a drifting kayak, as long as the current isn't too swift. 

[Al Agnew]

On 4/4/2021 at 11:40 PM, drew03cmc said:

This is something I have discovered. The more I kayak fish, the more power fishing I do. When I stop to wade or rest is when the jigs or finesse stuff comes out. I can fish a fluke decently from a drifting kayak, as long as the current isn't too swift. 

Exactly.  Since I don't like to get out and wade much, if I need to fish the slow stuff, I look for spots where I can get the canoe into an eddy, or up against a log or rock, even slide it up onto a water willow weed bed or up against the bank.  But most of my warm weather fishing is with the "power" stuff.  Wrench explained it well.  The rod never leaves my (left) hand, and at the end of a cast, if the canoe position needs to be corrected, I grab the paddle and make the one-handed strokes I need to do so.  Usually, I'm looking ahead to figure out the current line where I want to be, and getting into it with plenty of time.  Once I'm there, the positioning strokes are mainly keeping the canoe pointed the way I want it to be.  And most of them are backstrokes at various angles, or as Wrench said, sculling strokes.  Just one example...I'm drifting down a bank.  The current is faster toward the middle, away from the bank.  I'm casting ahead, at an angle to the bank or almost parallel to it.  I've already realized that the slower current is close to the bank.  I'm wanting to keep the canoe with the back end of it in the slower current, because if the front end starts to get into the slower stuff and the back end starts to veer out toward the middle, the canoe is going to soon be sideways to the current.  So my corrective stroke is to get that rear end back into the slower current.  Say I'm fishing the left bank.  My usual corrective stroke would be a backstroke with my right hand, turning the paddle blade so that I'm pushing the paddle outward, maybe even reaching back way behind my seat and pushing the stroke outward more than forward (pushing the paddle forward is a back stroke because it moves the canoe backwards, just to avoid confusion).  On the other hand, if I'm drifting the right bank and the front end starts to get into slower water, my corrective stroke is still on the right side, since I don't want to lay the rod down to switch hands, but now it's reaching way out from the canoe as well as behind me to start the stroke, and pulling the paddle forward and toward the canoe.  Heck, in a solo canoe, I often scull, and if I'm sculling holding the paddle a bit behind my body, it's slowly turning the back end of the canoe in that direction as well as moving the whole canoe sideways.  Or sculling with paddle in front of my body does the opposite.

Probably way more than anybody wants to read.

[tjm]

That's sounding more complicated and more like work the more I read. But your creeks may be slower or deeper or wider than I'm used to, in my mind's eye I see most of the current near the only bank with the slower water on the beach side.

[drew03cmc]

14 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Exactly.  Since I don't like to get out and wade much, if I need to fish the slow stuff, I look for spots where I can get the canoe into an eddy, or up against a log or rock, even slide it up onto a water willow weed bed or up against the bank.  But most of my warm weather fishing is with the "power" stuff.  Wrench explained it well.  The rod never leaves my (left) hand, and at the end of a cast, if the canoe position needs to be corrected, I grab the paddle and make the one-handed strokes I need to do so.  Usually, I'm looking ahead to figure out the current line where I want to be, and getting into it with plenty of time.  Once I'm there, the positioning strokes are mainly keeping the canoe pointed the way I want it to be.  And most of them are backstrokes at various angles, or as Wrench said, sculling strokes.  Just one example...I'm drifting down a bank.  The current is faster toward the middle, away from the bank.  I'm casting ahead, at an angle to the bank or almost parallel to it.  I've already realized that the slower current is close to the bank.  I'm wanting to keep the canoe with the back end of it in the slower current, because if the front end starts to get into the slower stuff and the back end starts to veer out toward the middle, the canoe is going to soon be sideways to the current.  So my corrective stroke is to get that rear end back into the slower current.  Say I'm fishing the left bank.  My usual corrective stroke would be a backstroke with my right hand, turning the paddle blade so that I'm pushing the paddle outward, maybe even reaching back way behind my seat and pushing the stroke outward more than forward (pushing the paddle forward is a back stroke because it moves the canoe backwards, just to avoid confusion).  On the other hand, if I'm drifting the right bank and the front end starts to get into slower water, my corrective stroke is still on the right side, since I don't want to lay the rod down to switch hands, but now it's reaching way out from the canoe as well as behind me to start the stroke, and pulling the paddle forward and toward the canoe.  Heck, in a solo canoe, I often scull, and if I'm sculling holding the paddle a bit behind my body, it's slowly turning the back end of the canoe in that direction as well as moving the whole canoe sideways.  Or sculling with paddle in front of my body does the opposite.

Probably way more than anybody wants to read.

This makes sense. I enjoy watching people paddle and observing how they manage currents and other things of that nature.

[Al Agnew]

13 hours ago, tjm said:

That's sounding more complicated and more like work the more I read. But your creeks may be slower or deeper or wider than I'm used to, in my mind's eye I see most of the current near the only bank with the slower water on the beach side.

Yeah, it's kinda tough to take something that has become automatic for me after all these years, and try to break it down in a written description of what I actually do.  You're right, in many places you can just get the canoe into the slow current on the other bank, but on my rivers that means you have to make a fairly long, cross-current cast to the good bank.  I'd rather keep the canoe close to the good bank and fish more parallel to it, so that my lure is in the good stuff longer.  One thing is for sure, low water and little wind makes it all a whole lot easier.