Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3909 April 10-24 | Page 22

20 April 10-24, 2020 VOL.39 • ISS. 9 Spotlight On Kayak Fishing... Sponsered by Kayak City in Citrus Heights, CA Kayak City.Com 916.565.1400 Commercial Fishing From A Kayak! By Kevin Hofer Always looking for a new adventure and challenge, it was about this time last year I started doing my research on commercial fishing. Living along the coast and having easy access to some very fishy waters, I thought, why not, I’ll give it a try. If it were only that easy… To just “give it a try”! I spent countless hours reading regulations trying to figure out what I could keep and sell, and how much. Many of my friends think that the sport fishing regulations are hard to understand at times, they pale in comparison to the commercial ones. After multiple trips to the district office and having face to face chats with wardens, phone calls and emails to Eureka, Sacramento and even someplace down south. I was finally getting all my questions answered about the what’s when’s where’s how’s and how many. By the time, April rolled around I was ready to go. My Radar 135 was registered commercial at both DMV and with DFW (yes, I got a few odd looks during that process when I said my boat is a kayak). I had my commercial fishing license, fish retail business license, and a commercial scale inspected and approved by the department of weights and measures. Ready to fish one might think, or at least hope, but no. I had to do an over the phone course on how to properly log all the data of fish caught onto the website. So, I got all my ducks in a row and I’m ready to go, now to just wait for the wind to stop blowing. Finally, the day came where I saw a brief window in the forecast to get out there before the afternoon spring howling winds pick up. The bite was good for a while and then started to slow just as the whitecaps began to come out. I was happy though and ready to come in from my inaugural trip, I had a decent stringer of good market sized fish. I have to admit it was a strange feeling keeping more lingcod than 2, and on shore I heard multiple times people telling me you know what the limit is right? None assumed a kayak fisherman was a commercial fisherman. I’d tell them, “That’s not the limit for me… would you like to buy one?” When the eyes open wide and, in their mind, I’m assuming they are already thinking of calling DFW on me, I tell them the story. Weeks of windy nasty conditions went by before I was able to get back out on the water. When I finally did get out the lingcod bite was slow and the ones I caught were not of commercial length. I struggled for a few trips in a row before finally getting back into my groove and catching some fish to help pay for all the licensing etc. It’s funny how when I was sport fishing years past it seemed I would catch tons of lings, but when trying to strictly target them I would only catch rockfish I couldn’t keep. As the months went by and the year came to an end, I look back now on my adventure and have such a new respect for all the commer- cial fisherman out there today, manly of whom their entire income is based off fishing. Think it was frus- trating for me when I couldn’t get out due to weather or when I couldn’t get a bite… Imagine your mortgage payment riding on it! KOKANEE ANGLERS CALL IT SLICK... WE CALL IT REVOLUTIONARY. THE MOST ADVANCED HANDLE EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE! SCAN WITH YOUR MOBILE DEVICE TO SEE THE S2 SLIDER IN ACTION! JOIN THE REVOLUTION AT WWW.EGOS2SLIDER.COM