Kayak fishing in the rain?

Fishing
#1

How many of you fish in the rain? We’ve had some crap weather in VA for spring and I’m picking up my new kayak tomorrow. Forecast calls for clouds/rain the next few days though…

#2

I’m a fair weather paddler, unless it is foul weather as part of a multi day trip

#3

Luckily haven’t had to do it in years, but that is what rain gear is for. Still wear your PFD. Fish still bite. Like most exercise, I will not start in the rain, but once out there keep exercising or fishing.

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#4

I grew up on the Washington coast. If there was anything you didn’t do in the rain, it meant you didn’t do it at all.

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#5

I have been caught out in the rain and fishing usually got bettter. Any thunder or lightning time to get off the water.

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#6

Fishing in the rain sounds miserable. But I’m from Arizona, where we only have 2 kinds of weather.

  1. drought
  2. massive flooding,
    Seems like every year some one dies around here in a flash flood.

I guess I’m a fair weather fisherman.

#7

I’ve fished in the rain, pulled ashore in lighting, and fished the tail end of a hurricane. But cold rain is the worst. Cold rain saps your hand strength. When I hooked a fish I could barely hold the rod to land it. That trip was early spring, air and water where both 50 degrees but the rain had me soaked.

#8

Really depends on your clothing. When I was younger, before GoreTex etc, we were not in the boat in the rain. We had a basic outboard motor boat my father had built.

But since kayaking I have dry wear, a GoreTex cag, hat and good neoprene gloves. I have cut back on my foul weather paddling as I got older. But go back a bit and my husband and I would happily launch in the rain if there was not lightening, and that was the only way we were going to paddle that day.

#9

Of course. Serious fishermen fish in the snow, they fish all winter.
There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.
A kayak with a cockpit protects your lower body from the weather.

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#10

In questionable weather I carry an old plastic shower curtain liner with me. If rain starts I nose onto shore and use the liner to cover me in my kayak, then when it clears I fold it back up and continue fishing.

#11

Depends on what I"m doing. Chasing brown trout, low light, cloudy, rainy days are best. Chasing smallmouths prefer some sun.

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#12

Hi Salmontrutta,
Finally someone that gets it. Bad weather brings out the big browns. Same with other large pescatorious fish. I used to fish late in the fall for big trout. We had to wait for the ice to melt to launch the boat. Sometimes we came home in a blizzard. That’s when the best fishing takes place.

I remember fishing in the rain in Grand Canyon above the Little Colorado, big trout every other cast.
Fly fishing for goldens in the Sierra in the rain. Best day fishing of my life.

Get some good rain gear and stay out there.

#13

When I was a kid many moons ago, all the old wise fishermen always said “fish feed after a rain”. I have always found it to be true. Modern rain gear and raised seats in fishing kayaks, so you are not sittng in a puddle all day make it way more bearable.