PINELAND, Fla. — A kayak is no match for a manatee.
I learned that the hard way while fishing in Pine Island Sound at Pineland. I was there May 17-20 for a media event hosted by Hobie Worldwide, which included inshore saltwater fishing with the full catalog of Hobie fishing kayaks. Hobie’s top experts were there to answer questions and provide tips for rigging and optimizing kayak performance. They included Doug Skidmore, president of Hobie Worldwide, and Ruth Triglia, vice president of sales.
It was essentially an immersive kayak fishing school with some of the world’s best kayak anglers.
I used a Mirage Outback the first day. It’s a squat, stable vessel that handled the hard chop of a 20 mph wind. With practice, I even learned to fish while standing in it.
For fishing, I borrowed St. Croix Legend Inshore rods and Daiwa spinning reels from Morgan Promnitz, Hobie’s Fishing Product Manager. Promnitz also supplied a selection of swimbaits and a couple of topwater plugs, including a Zara Spook, produced by Fort Smith-based PRADCO.
The morning started hot when I hooked a decent size redfish on my third cast less than 100 yards from the ramp at Pineland Marina. It glowed bronze in the soft morning light, and the black spot on its tail was luminous.
From there, I escorted Vincent Le Masson, a French journalist, to an exposed oyster reef in the middle of the sound. Le Masson and I share a deep affection for Sebile lures. He loves them because of their Gallic origin. I love them because they catch fish. My testiness over his leisurely method of photography amused him greatly.
“I am ready for you to catch another fish so that you may complain some more,” Le Masson taunted.
That tiny oyster reef is an amazing place. The surrounding water is about 4 feet deep. The bottom is carpeted with sea grass. Giant schools of mullet leaped like Olympic hurdlers, and vast schools of baitfish created acres of “nervous” water as they dodged predators. Speckled sea trout were the most ubiquitous foragers, but redfish, bluefish, jack crevalles and, of course, sharks menaced the mullets, too.
I caught a couple of trout near the reef, but I hooked one that pulled so hard that I mistook it for a redfish. It was 26 inches long, my lifetime best.
A 6-foot deep trough runs through the sound past a long mangrove key, and that’s where the biggest fish are. Lacking a depthfinder, I followed it by tracking a ribbon of darker water. I caught a few trout, but things had a chance to get more interesting when I got into a school of ladyfish.
Called “poor man’s tarpon,” ladyfish are long, slender, silvery fish that hit violently and fight ferociously. Their leaping and thrashing sometimes attract bigger fish, so I played them longer than usual in hopes of hooking something more exciting.
This was my first extended experience piloting a Hobie, and its Mirage Drive exceeded my expectations. The Mirage Drive is Hobie’s proprietary propulsion system. It’s a pair of fins on a pedal drive that protrudes from the keel. Pedaling oscillates the fins and creates propulsion in a manner that resembles that of a stingray.
With a walking pace on the pedals, you’ll leave the fastest paddle-powered boat in the spray. It defies wind, and since it frees your hands, it allows you to fish instead of wrangle a paddle.
I covered many miles and spent a good part of the afternoon trying to catch snook from the mangroves. They lie deep among the branches in very shallow water, and the only way to reach them is to skip baits through keyhole openings.
I used weedless swimbaits. My casts were precise, but I didn’t get a bite. A plastic frog, tube jig or a Zoom Baby Lizard or Brush Hawg on a Florida rig would be deadly for this kind of fishing, and I will use them next time I fish mangroves.
The next day I used Hobie’s acclaimed Pro Angler 14. It really isn’t a kayak because you would be highly challenged to propel it with a paddle, but it’s a dream to run with the Mirage Drive. It weighs about 121 pounds, but it is surprisingly nimble and faster than the Outback, despite weighing 40 pounds more.
Because of the grass, the bottom of Pine Island Sound is olive green, but there are open sandy spots. You’ll catch a lot of fish, including trout and flounder, fishing the inside edges of these light spots near the fringes.
I was pedaling across the sound to the lee side of a mangrove key to fish for redfish and snook when I crossed the top of what I thought was a sandy opening. It was, instead, a manatee loafing on the bottom.
My kayak grazed its back, and the Mirage Drive flippers slapped its back. The manatee panicked and bounced my kayak about 3 feet into the air before making a frantic, explosive circle around me.
Christina Weber, Yakangler’s 2015 Kayak Angler of the Year, said, “That’s why manatees are more dangerous than sharks.”
Weber’s personal mission statement is, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about finding fish.”
Again, the snook wouldn’t play, but I spooked a couple of big ones fishing the wrong sides of their lairs.
The trick to fishing mangroves is to remain stationary with your bow facing the cover. My PA had a small, single-blade paddle that I used as a sculling paddle to accomplish this task.
By midafternoon I hadn’t caught a fish, so I returned to my oyster reef.
I pedal-trolled a swimbait across the flat and caught several trout, but big fish kept breaking me off until I exhausted my supply of weedless jigs.
The Zara Spook was my last option. It seemed untenable in such ferocious wind, but it saved the day. Trout smashed the Spook, and a couple of really big fish that I couldn’t identify swung and missed.
Then the jack crevalles came to play. They hit like oversized, turbocharged smallmouth bass and fought like Jermaine Taylor. The last one I caught, which you can see in the online video on arkansasonline.com, weighed about 8 pounds and pulled the PA-14 in a circle.
Those few days in Pine Island Sound were pure bliss, and they illustrated why the fishing kayak is the fastest growing segment of the boating industry.
I can’t get enough of it.