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PENNSYLVANIA
smallIes outsIDe
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‰
Pennsylvania’s rural
Susquehanna River is a
LIGHT AND FLAG IMPROVES SOLAS PINSTRIPING
long shot from the mean
VISIBILITY—DAY OR NIGHT. KIT FOR KAYAKS inner city streets of Rich-
mond, where John Oast
"ETHERE"ESAFE"EVISIBL
worked
E
a beat. “I don’t
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get shot at

any more,”
P
WWWYAKATTACKUS
says the former police-
h
o
t
o
man and avid kayak an-
:
j
o
h
gler, happily settling into
n

o
a
st
the country life.
“Most people up here have never seen a sit-on-top
kayak,” says Oast, which gives him plenty of opportuni-
ties to play show and tell. As the man behind Fishyaker.
com, he’s ideally suited to the task. His site is home
to more than two dozen self-produced YouTube how-to
videos covering most every aspect of the sport.
Oast is clearly mad for the Susquehanna, a shallow,
rocky raceway dotted with class II rapids. “You can of-
ten see the bottom. Boulders are submerged all over the
place. Ten feet is as deep as it gets,” he says.
It’s not a welcoming environment for powerboats.
Oast usually has the river and its smallmouth to him-
self. “You can launch just about anywhere,” Oast says
as he describes his hybrid technique. He fishes from
the kayak on the drift, or hops out at an eddy and wades.
Throwing shallow-diving crankbaits or three- to four-
inch grubs, he plucks fish after fish from among the
rocks. The Susquehanna is good if underappreciated.
“We can do stuff in couple-hundred-dollar kayaks
that a boater’s not going to want to do. Smallmouth are
so plentiful out here.”
DoraDo HAWAII
tropIcal traDItIon,
easy on the wallet
Jesse Johnston lives in
paradise. Maui no ka
oi—Maui is the best.
It’s also pricey. “I
couldn’t justify purchas-
P
h
o
t
o
ing a powerboat. It’s too
:
j
e
s
expensive. What I do is
s
e

j
o
h
good enough. I catch
n
st
o
fish,” says Johnston, one
n
of the Maui Southside Crew, a tight group of guys who
found each other through word of mouth and Aquahunt-
ers.com, Hawaii’s excellent online kayak fishing resource.
“Honestly, being a kayak fisher, a cup of coffee, five
or ten bucks of bait, that’s your day right there,” John-
ston quips.
Johnston is quick to admit that in Hawaii’s tricky
ocean, the kayak has few advantages over a powerboat
when it comes to hunting ono and mahi, fish better
known to mainlanders as wahoo and dorado.
But wait, there’s more.
“The island tradition is one- or two-man fishing
canoes—outriggers back in the day. The guys who re-
ally fed the village went offshore. For some of the local
boys, it’s a return to the old ways. We’re out there do-
ing similar things with modern equipment and bringing
home fish. It is a lot more exciting to catch one on a
little plastic boat way out there,” Johnston says, point-
ing out a truth every kayak angler knows at heart.
3
…
KayaK angler sPring/suMMer 200
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