Fishing from high performance sea kayak

Question
I paddle a narrow and fast kayak with a skeg.  I am not committed enough to fishing to change that but I do like to troll when I'm paddling and sometimes sit in the boat and fish.  My boat is so unstable that landing a big sea trout or redfish is all but impossible without capsizing.  How have you dealt with this?  I have considered sponsons and thought that maybe I could just put two paddle floats on my spare paddle and shove it under a deck bungee.  I appreciate hearing of your experiences.  

Answer
Big (over 15lbs) and aggressive fish (pike, tigermuskie, muskie, wiper, grass carp) do not come out of the water. I either release them after getting a picture of them in the water or use my homemade stringers to strap them to the boat and drag them to shore for cleaning.

My stringers consist of #10 THHN stranded copper electrical wire with a loop at one end and a point at the other end. I make the loop by doubling the wire over and wrapping it with stainless steel wire to tie it off. I then cover the stainless steel wire with Hot Glue to cover all the sharp and snaggy edges of the stainless wire. The point is much more simple as I just cut back the insulation about 3/4" from the other end and solder the strands together. I then file the soldered copper to a point and round off this point so it won't snag when going through its gills but I still leave it sharp enough to penetrate the thin skin at the lower jaw.

The real trick to it is to have a piece of this same wire that will wrap around the bottom of the kayak ahead of the cockpit. This loop is what keeps a large fish from capsizing me if they make a run off to the right or left. The stringer that the fish is attached to is attached to this loop and slides freely back and fourth under the boat. This eliminates the hazard of directly attaching a fish stringer to the deck.

I know my explanation may be hard to follow but I can send you pictures if you would like. Also, though this system has worked flawlessly with me and I have never capsized while engaged in fishing (the one time at the boat dock does not count), I will say that you do know that you have a 20lb Striper under your boat and I don't think I would ever continue to fish using my system with a large fish attached.

Another advantage to my system is that I get scrap wire from work for nothing.

Matt
[email protected]

P.S. Self inflating (CO2) sponsoons sounds like a cool product for kayak fishermen.