Anyone fish off their SUP?
A friend and I were talking and we thought catching a big fish, big enough to pull the fisherman + SUP board would be interesting at minimum. Im guessing a 13 footer would be good for this.
I wonder whatever happened to those motorized Hawaiian fish boards? Looks like a blast.
hey dave this your next project looks intresting
huie
I don’t do the SUP thing but recently saw some pics on another forum of guys fishing the Banana River No Motor Zone
off their SUPs. I was fishing off a 10’6’’ with a rodholder mounted on it almost twenty years ago but then I got a kayak.
I’ve been towed around at a pretty good clip by tarpon, king mackerel, cobia, and the assorted shark and jack crevalle.
Standing up and fighting a fish on an SUP would be an impressive feat of balance.
I do’nt know about SUP fishing, but i have fished off my 6’4 70s single fin and caucht perch rockfish and yellow croaker
We place four leash plugs on our first gneration SUP to hold down a fishing box. Our boards are 12’ x 30" x 4.5" to 5" thick. A fishing box is nothing more that a plastic milk crate with PVC pipe pole holders. Sometimes I rig a surface popper tied on to 30 yards of mono connected to me around my waist with surgical rubber tubing. We catch papios (jacks) or kaku (barracudas).
It’s a great way to exercise and sometimes we get lucky and bring home dinner.
Both Manoa and I sold our motorized fishing surfboards. A bunch of firemen bought our boards. We have plans to make them lighter with storage compartments. Manoa is in the middle of re-modeling his home and I am busy with coaching water polo now. We will get those projects started in the summer again.
D.
Hi Dave, this has been an obsession of mine for a few years. I’ve done it mostly on a 12’4" tandem surfboard.
I chase tuna schools when they come close to the coast…it’s a blast.
Most of the fish are in the 15-30lb range.
I’ve been towed along way out to sea by yellowfin tuna in the 50-60 pound range. That is just downright scary being towed through a massive feeding frenzy a mile out to sea with a dying 50 pound fish on the end of the line.
I’m going to do it from a kayak in future because it just feels a bit more secure when a 12 foot tiger shark wants to take your dying tuna.
Hooking up to a big fish and getting towed out to sea is a major buzz.
Keep us posted.
Sharks had a little to do with me switching to kayak also, that and a feeble attempt to keep my spinning reels dry.
I don’t think I’d want anything to do with a tuna, however. How do you handle the ‘‘circle of death’’ at the end of the fight?
(I’m assuming that your tuna behave the same as our tuna, if yours are more polite, please correct me)
I remember when I ‘‘accidently’’ hooked a 35 lb cobia, I wasn’t casting to HIM. The fish were on manta rays and I cast to the
small one I saw, and the bigger one came out from under the ray and grabbed the fly. I went ''oh shit, this is going to be trouble…"
A half hour later I had him at the boat trying to figure out ways to break him off (can’t cut the fly line, too expensive) without
tearing up any tackle. If I had had a pistol or a bang-stick I might have tried to put him in the yak, live cobia are dangerous as
hell on any boat, much less a kayak.
The circle of death : I use 35 pound braid with a 50 pound mono wind on leader…you fight for every inch as the tuna circles then gill or tail the fish…sort of straddle it while Ikijima with a sharp knife…then straddle it , lie on top of it back to the beach…success rate is very low per hookup. One fish landed is a major buzz. That one went 35 pound and supplied alot of sashimi…at market rates it’s about a $300-400 dollar fish.
Steve
Guys are landing billfish from kayaks so big fish can be subdued. Sharks are the bogeyman…dying fish attract sharks.
Lennox,
You are a sick man…put some strings in that hammoc stand behind you a have a good lie down. Use strong string cause your balls will be so heavy, you’ll break it!
Rocky
that’s some manly shit right there.
I’m trying to convince my brother to build a 2m outrigger
to fly fish the south bay here.
running out of room in the garage.
i use my 9’8" mal to fly fish the reefs around here. heaps of fun targeting salmon. get some crazy looks but…
Wow. Im stoked to build something now. Considered building a small composite boat too. I like sneaky small boats and ultralight tackle to catch easily spooked sports fish.
L76, your story reminded me in bed last night…when I was a small boy, the first book I was really stoked on reading cover to cover was Hemmingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. You da man. Cheers for sharing.
Thanks for the feedback gents…If I make a SUP I want to make a lexan viewing window. In the intracoastal waterway that I fitness paddle, I always run into manatees…I could take my daughter with me where she can get a real good look. They make 1.5mm Okueme marine plywood that would make a good composite skin for SUP. O-ply is the preffered ply for boat building.
Hey Dave , like most things around here Greenough laid down the template. He’s been fishing off a mat or old windsurfer since day dot. We paddle out to a close offshore island and fish for tailor (bluefish).
First time I did it with him we were getting stuck into a hot bite on 5-6 pound tailor…George said “check the size of that shark”…I looked and saw a 2 foot dorsal 10 feet off the rock we were standing on. Mad scramble to pack rod and fish away …fish blood everywhere. By the time I had packed and was ready to launch George had gone…disappeared… I though he had been munched.
Finally go to the beach after a long nervous paddle.
George was on the beach with his fish already cleaned.
“I wasn’t waiting around when I saw that shark”
A small boat is a safer option if sharks are in your neighborhood cause you will have close encounters fishing off a board.
steve
i lost a mate to the sea fishing from a kayak
make sure you got flares and handheld radio steve
hypothermia gets most of em over here
anyway always wanted one of these
you should consider stitch and glue as an alternative to a SUP, perhaps.
there are a lot of sites that sell plans for stitch and glue boat building.
it’s cheap, light and the only difficult part is the glassing, which you probably
already have wired.
I’m working with a guy who’s helping me translate the Laird english channel
SUP design to a SnG format…should be really cool when it’s done.
l ive done alot of fishing in baja off a velzy compsand surftech…too much flex in the board when the offshores came up …every little wind chop would stall the board a bit…
we nailed so many fish down there…my 2 friends and I fished wide open calicos, sandies, spotties…halibut up to 15 ibs… bonita, monster jacksmelt 
and even a couple nice grouper… soooo much fun…
when I build my fishing board( oh yes , been planning it for a while now) ill post pics here…
anyone ever been on www.boardfishing.com ??? …cool site…
I haven’t tried an SUP to fish from yet, but have a lot of kayak fishing experience. Seems to me that it would be easier to fish off of an SUP then out of a kayak. It always seems that the largest fish find you when you are least prepared and also hit at a broad side angle. On an SUP, you could walk back and spin it off its fin to line it up, but the deper keel line of a kayak disallows turning it as readily, while you are stuck in only one spot.