A rebuild of this website was long overdue when I recently found inpiration to start over. Going back to the drawing board - and this time with much better software at my disposal - I was able to build a site that was free of the limitations that were inherant in yakabout's design template. And as you poke around Yakass.net, I think you'll quickly appreciate what I mean by that. It's simply bigger and better in just about every way, preserving all (or most) of what made yakabout popular, only now presenting it all much better. In essence, Yakass is the spiritual successor to Yakabout and will now be taking over from where Yakabout leaves off.
With a new name comes a new direction. Not only is Yakass the home of the 'War on Fish' online kayak fishing show, it is also going to be updated with more content, by more contribuitors with greater frequency. Much more user-friendly than yakabout, Yakass is also much more user-interactive. Readers are strongly urged to register as members of the new site, as many of the sites features can only be viewed and accessed when you are logged in. Yakabout accounts will not work at the new site, however, which is rather regrettable, but unavoidable.
Yakabout will remain, primarily as an archive for all of the content created in the past, as well as a host for the yakabout map, which is the only part of this site I will maintain (and very likely to become the front page). Observant visitors will note, however, that it is closely integrated into the framework of Yakass.net, and in that sense yakabout lives on in the new site. Seeya there!
Thanks to the team from Shark Shield who kindly donated a Freedom 7 for us to giveaway as a prize, for the past month we've been asking for readers to give us a reason to pick them as the lucky recipient. There were a lot of great entries and as I spent the past few nights reading and re-reading the entries I found myself wishing we had a 2nd & 3rd place prizes to give away as well. There were quite a few contenders and If it hadn't been for Alexander's offering (click the read more link to see it), it would have been really tough to call. Though it was a pretty close race in my own mind, both Holger and Carl picked the same entry as well and that pretty much made Alexander the winner by numbers.
Alexander made his point graphically, demonstrating that fish are easily fooled by lures and suggesting that sharks are no different. Within his post he shows how - with just a little imagination - that his 'Outlaw' kayak might be acting a lot like a big shark lure. Whether it is or not, his new Freedom 7 Shark Shield will certainly make him feel a lot more at ease.
As amusing and even as sensational as the winning entry is, I think it's fair to say there's also a little truth to it as well. Although encounters with large sharks are relatively rare, take it from someone who has been there - an inquisitive shark will be most curious about your kayak.Thats the point at which one is well served to have a Shark Shield on board.
Well done Alexander and thanks to all who entered. It wasn't at all a laborious task to try and pick a winner because there were some great posts contributed. For those of you who narrowly missed out, come back tomorrow to see what we have in store for our Xmas competition (not to mention a brand-new website to reveal it with).
It's taken exactly one week to build the new web 2.0 version to the stage it is currently at, which is - I'm please to add - now feature complete. That means that every single feature I was hoping to implement is now working, all of it humming away in unison. And there really are a lot of new features to - one would have to spend a good 5 - 10 minutes looking closely at the site and clicking all sorts of buttons and links to discover it all. So far, my few test subjects have failed miserably to spot even half of the new features. Does that mean the features are too well hidden to be obvious? Not really... I was aiming for subtlety and this suggests that I succeeded. That said, I have since decided to write up a bit of a guide on getting the most out of this site. On the surface it looks a bit like yakabout did - especially to someone who hasn't registered and logged in. But upon logging in, members will notice more features become available to them. And the more they dig, the more they'll find.
I will be spending the next day or so porting over all of the best content created so far into the new site and as soon as the bulk of it is in, I'll be making the switch. When you guys get to see it I think you'll understand why I saw the hacking of yakabout as an opportunity, instead of being a road-block. I have been much more careful in constructing this site to, so not only should it be much tougher to hack into, it will also be far easier to ressurect should it happen again.
It was a tough call as to whether to fit out the Island as a full trimaran or otherwise as an outrigger this morning. I'd paid attention to Ask Huey, which suggested that conditions would ease up continually, whereas H had paid attention to Seabreeze, which said exactly the opposite. Both of us trusting our sources, I decided to go with the outrigger, H decided to go full trimaran. As it turned out, Huey was right. It was a little blowy at around 6AM when we launched, but an hour later it there was almost no wind at all. And as H found out, sometimes its just a better idea to minimalize. Today was definitely a better day for using the Island as an outrigger.
We covered quite a few km while zig-zagging around under pedal power but eventually we did find some fish. Close to the rocks just near the point at Woody Head were the usual signs of fish on the sounder and it only took one pass to hook up. I was trolling with the rod in hand, twitching and tweaking it was we moved. So when I felt a small tug I responded by tugging back, instantly rewarded with a hook up. It didn't take long to boat the snapper, which turned out to be the consumate pan-sized fish.
Despite a few more attempts no more fish were caught, although H did have two lures chomped clean off the line, either by mackerel or (my best guess), sharks. In my experience, those Woody Head sharks love the redhead style trolling lures and that's exactly what H was using. And given that I spotted a rather large shard earlier in the day, I figured there might be plenty more around.
I'd say that when I sighted it, the shark would have been almost a km away. That I could make out that it was a shark at that distance should tell you a thing or two about it's size. Although it's impossible to accurately gauge species from that distance, if asked to bet, I'd place money on it being a great white. For one, it had to have been pretty big. Secondly, juxtaposed to it's near-black coloured top-side, it's belly was incredibly white. After turning on the Shark Shield and pedalling on over to investigate there were no more sightings.
Scott Lovig sends word of a notable catch in my old stomping grounds at Port Phillip Bay, Victoria. This 41kg thresher shark was caught off Mornington (not far from where I was once sharked by a thresher, a little further sth) by Paul Spath. Here's what Scott about Paul's achievement at his website: Paul Spath, the new owner of a Hobie Adventure christened his kayak in style with the capture of an elusive Thresher Shark here in Mornington. The 41kg shark took a trolled hard body lure internded for snapper rigged on 10lb braid and 20lb leader. Paul fought the shark for one and a half hours before he managed to tail grab it and was assisted by charter operator Mathew Hunt to gaff the fish. A Victorian kayak fishing first!
And that's not all. Scott was there to catch some of the action on video!
Thanks to the team from 
Scott Lovig sends word of a notable catch in my old stomping grounds at Port Phillip Bay, Victoria. This 41kg thresher shark was caught off Mornington (not far from where I was once sharked by a thresher, a little further sth) by Paul Spath. Here's what Scott about Paul's achievement at his