A Trip Upon The River Thames Monday 5th July 2010

With a chat on the phone with Rob over the previous week we planned a trip for days paddling upon The River Thames.






I loaded up the car on Sunday night so all I had to do is pop the kayak on top of the car in the morning. I decided to set off to Robs in Uxbridge at 07:00 am to miss most of the traffic. I have done this journey at this time many times before and always had a clear run.
This time however was different.
After a slow plod at 35-40mph up the A2070 in a Que following a lorry I finally get outside Ashford.
Now do I go through Ashford to M20 Junction 9 or go to Junction 10 to bypass Ashford?
I know I will take the Junction 10 turning as traffic may start to build up in the town....
....Wrong move I'm stuck in traffic on the bypass due to road works and down to a single lane. Finally I get onto the M20 after 55 min which is usually a 25min journey.

Now I am running late. Never mind I still should be OK though as Im now on the Motorway.

It was a nice clear run up the M20 and I turned onto the M26 with a steady 70mph run then all of a sudden gridlock. Oh No!  I've still got 55 miles to go! At a stop start speed! Not Impressed!

My 1hr 45min journey ended up being a 3hr 15min one. Oh well at least I got there in the end and the days paddling we had more than made up for it.





We put Robs kayak on the roof and headed for Walton Bridge where we parked up and launched our kayaks.

It couldn't of been a nicer day. We ended up paddling about 8 miles taking in the scenery, messing about in a few weirs and topping up our tans. Shame I didn't take a rod.





Once again it was time to head back to the cars, pack up the gear and head home.

Fitting a Tackle Box

I spent weeks finding a tackle box to fit into the well of my Prowler Trident 13.
Some U.S. anglers use a Plano 1612 or a Flambeau 1408 dry boxes.
These boxes fit into the well perfectly and I've had yet another task to find one here in the U.K.

Whilst flicking through saltwateryakfisherman.blogspot.com post I saw that he had a box fitted to his kayak and after some time looking through his older posts he had quoted that he purchased his Flambeau from Solent Plastics.
I'd previously had been looking on this site and somehow missed seeing it advertised.
The box was a titled Zerust Flambeau marine box. So a quick phone call and one was purchased and on its way.





I had one small problem! They now only supply it in Brown!
.....BROWN! ....YUCK! ....NO WAY!
Well the box it serves its purpose and the seat and crate will hide it anyway!
I may change it if I come across another colour.




Now how do I fix this down and stop it falling out?

The stock bungee that is fitted to this well is too tight to fit over the box and if it was fitted I wouldn't be able to access it without removing the bungee so I planed to remove it and find another way of attaching the box.

In the end I decided to leave the stock bungee in place and sat the box in between the two cords. I then fixed 2x pad eyes, one to either side of the box using tri-fold rivets and used 4mm bungee cord and hooks attached to the pad eyes. I can now secure the box to my seat rear attachment pad eyes.




Job done.

Saturday 12th June 2010

I Picked up my new kayak from Kent Canoes.

An Ocean Kayak Prowler Trident 13 Angler to upgrade from my Caper angler which I have paddled for a few years now and out grown due to being limited when carrying my fishing gear.

I Just had to take it out and as soon as I got home I grabbed my paddle kit and headed to the beach.

I can't wait to fish from it.

Sunday 27th June 2010

My first fishing trip out with my Prowler Trident 13.

I met up with Rob who is my kayaking and fishing friend also is my uncle who loves to kayak whenever he gets a chance.

We decided to travel to Sandgate to launch our kayaks for some fishing.
After a 30 min drive we arrived the beach an it was packed with sunbathers.
We had some trouble finding a space to launch at the shoreline.

Eventually we got out and there wasn't a ripple on the water or even a breeze. Just perfect.
We paddled half a mile or so to an inshore reef and had a few drifts over it with lures to pick up some Bass or Pollock.




Today it seemed like nothing was biting. We continued paddling along and fishing around the inshore rocks and reefs in our search for some fish with no luck.




I decided to switch over to feathers in search for some Mackerel and couldn't find any of them either.
It was a complete failure nothing seemed to be working so we just took it on the chin and enjoyed the sunshine whilst paddling around fishing until we reached Folkestone Harbor where it was full of anglers that didn't seem to be catching anything either.
This made me feel a little better in myself as it wasn't just me having some bad luck.




Time seemed to fly past and it was then time for the long paddle back to the cars before our tickets ran out.

Making a Crate for the Prowler Trident 13

After a lot of thinking on finding a way to store tackle and gear I decided on going down the route of many other Kayak anglers and build a Crate.

Many of the U.S. anglers use a milk crate which is unobtainable in the U.K. So I set out to find another type of crate which would fit into my New Prowler Trident 13.

After a bit of searching around I found some fold up crate in Argos made by Really Useful Boxes and £6.99 for three. These fitted into the rear tank well perfect.
I had also decided to attach some rod holders to the crate to keep the rods out of the way whilst paddling and not in use.
Waste pipe and clips was my first option but looked a bit untidy.
I remembered seeing some rod holders in the local tackle shop. So I purchased them.
Berkley triple rod holders for £11.99 They fit inside the crate like a glove.
Now to fix everything together.




I had an idea of mounting 12mm ply board varnished to the side of the crate and then mount the holders to the ply. This seemed to add a lot of weight to the crate. I had to come up with another idea.

I decided to use some UPVC sofit boarding that I had laying around, this is much lighter and once fixed together with stainless nuts and bolts and fixings is now very strong and hopefully corrosion free.
I have also added a UPVC board to the opposite end and a divider to separate my items such as my anchor. The Crate is now fixed and non folding which prevents it from accidentally collapsing up whilst in use.

Prowler Trident 13 Anchor Trolley Rigging

Rigging the anchor trolley was looking like it was going to be a tough task ahead.
I had to come up with a way to fit it with out drilling a single hole as I did not want to attack my new kayak with a drill.

After much thinking I decided to use the original deck fittings. So I ripped off all of the stock rigging from the right hand side of the Prowler and armed with 5m of 4mm deck line, 2x 20mm Barton blocks, 1x stainless carabiner, 1x stainless 25mm ring and some 6mm bungee cord I set out on a mission to fit a full length non drill anchor trolley and succeeded.

It was a lot easier than I originally thought.

I attached the Barton blocks to both front and rear end deck line guides using a small length of 6mm bungee and an overhand knot. The Bungee is strong and adds tension to the trolley lines so they pull in tight to the kayak and stop them flapping about all over the place.
I then threaded the top trolley line through the top deck line guides on the kayak, through the rollers on the blocks and fitted the carabiner and stainless ring to the deck line making sure the line was under tension once I had it all clipped up.

Threading the upper line of the trolley through the deck line guides gives the trolley some resistance as well as keeping the lines tidy which helps at anchor and with the top trolley line pulled up over the paddle keeper button locks the line and carabiner secure in place for safety when at anchor or retrieving your anchor.