Below Freezing Temperatures: Check
Wide open wind swept body of water: Check
Frozen hands, a$$, and thighs: Check
Worth it? As they say in the land of my birth, "Ya, you betcha!"
I got off work later than I had hoped and got on the water at about 2:30 ish. I saw another NWKAer up river from the launch, so I paddled up to say hi. You can see him behind me in the orange kayak. As you can see, he chose a sunny spot out of the wind. He was much smarter than I.
Due to the fact all the nice holes on the sunny side of the river were taken, I paddled back to the west side of the river by the launch. By the time I was set up and anchored it was 3:00. I was getting nibbles, missing hook sets, and feeding several sand shrimp and night crawlers to something. Finally, at about 3:45 pm, I hooked into this friendly little shaker. I was actually disappointed when he surfaced because he fought very hard for his size, so I expected him to be larger. Luckily, I had turned on my GoPro video camera just before catching him so I could pull some photos from the video.
I called it quits a little after 4:00. By the time I got up to the parking lot my wheel ez straps were frozen to the yak.
Here you can see the water drops that had frozen
I may brave it again tomorrow. They only are allowing 2550 fish to be harvested this season and last weekend (the opening of the season) well over 1000 were caught. Tomorrow may be the last day.
I have never caught a keeper sized fish when it was legal to retain one. You can catch and release 7 days a week year round. They are supposed to be one of the best tasting fish, so I would really like to catch one and try it.
)which is why they are so much heavier than the line. Also, the bottom is pretty rocky. I have been using a larger saltwater spinning reel. I have a heavier set-up with 65 pound line, but I wasn't targeting the over-sized sturgeon so I went with the lighter set-up.