Thread: Canterbury High Country Lakes Kayak trolling ? Advice expertise

I spend a lot of time in the Canterbury high country hunting and fishing.
I don't often go hungry

But the more strings to your bow the better
And now that Fish & Game no longer stock the lakes some places that were a sure bet are fairly hard work.

The two things is should up skill on are trout jigging and trolling from a hard shell sit on kayak

So who can give me some real world advice on the trolling game ?

I always take one of my packrafts to cross lakes and rivers to access other water and get the wind right.
But crossing big water in a packraft is hard work ( but very stable )
So should take the kayak more often and troll as I go ( but less stable )

It's not like I dont know how to fish, its just there are always a few tricks to getting your lures into the target zone efficiently and managing things when you hook up.

And wouldn't it be nice to have a tiny fish finder gadget for trout jigging !

there are actully tiny fish finder gadgets...but I put in gadget catagouri...
try a fly the likes of small fuzzy wuzzy,lagiaconda,hairy dog,gumboot running free on main line 50-75cm up for main lure with small swivel below it..so fly is sitting on mainline in front of lure,gives appearance of small fish chasing little thing..I found hook ups were about 50% on each..BUT the downside is have to be more certain at netting time as the other hook can hit net causing chaos. consider the outrigger on hardshell maybe??? will solve stability issue.
any time fishing is great,anytime in/on small boats just makes it more so.

Trolling from a kayak isn't as easy as it looks. Unless you have a pedal kayak, you can't paddle and control the rod at the same time. The big question is how deep are the fish? Options are to fish a lure straight from mono/braid, fish it with a few colours of leadcore line, fish with a full length of leadcore, use trolling weights or a downrigger

You can get down to 15 metres, maybe more with leadcore line, but it can be hard to manage on a kayak. Downriggers are expensive and a bit specialist. Trolling weights look a bit messy and prone to tangles to me, but some people have success with them. You could just try pulling a lure tied straight to braid/mono. I've had surprising success with this technique in the Rotorua Lakes, but the fish have to be close to the surface and this usually means colder water temperatures, so it's a technique for early morning. A small spinner or bibbed lure works really well, but it can be a waste of time of there's a lot of floating weed around.

Jigging without a fish finder would be very hard work unless there are a lot of fish in the lake.

99.9% of the time we trol with mono only and have great success,if you want to go deeper,let more line out or go heavier lure. I dislike deadline as it takes most of the fight out of fish,it feels so much more like hook n winch in to me.by time fish is near boat it's given in.

Handline trolling is the way to go from a kayak.

Not sure if it is legit for trout but have caught plenty of kahawai using this method.

Just have a set length (ie how far you want the lure behind the kayak)of mono on a handline spool and let the whole lot out.

I have a short piece of bungy and clip attaching the spool to the kayak which acts as a shock absorber for the strike.

Easy as

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

Not legal for trout..must be running line.rod and reel.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

Not legal for trout..must be running line.rod and reel.

Cheers mate, I wasn't sure about that Awsome for kahawai tho

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

@MB agree with most of what you said

Managing lots of variables on a kayak in a chop and wind is the issue
The problem with the packraft in the last few days was a lack of hull speed and having to paddle constantly

It's a work in progress and should be up there in the next few weeks and this time I will take a kayak

I found a paravane worked well on Lake Coleridge. Id often run two sets ups, one with and one without. The one with a paravane caught 90% of the fish.

Edit: I've got a spare one here if you'd like to try it. Just send me your address and ill post it to you.