Widsa wrote:Holy resurrection Batman!

It was probably due for a

keeping safety in the forefront is a good thing. Worth bumping every opportunity Widsa.

Yeah I know, no worries at all.

Flags are "definitely" a good idea, but the closest I've come to being run over is when I "had" a flag up. Just saying!! there's idiots out there in boats that would run into other boats.

Hey guys, ive been away from the forum for quite some time since briefly joining a while back, hopefully this time i will have more time to become an active member of the community.

Anyway on this topic, i was fishing with a mate of mine just outside the Sandy breakwall a while back. We were basically doing drifts from the south to north chasing flathead as we have done countless times before.

On this particular day the wind was just starting to pick up and we were pretty much on the final drift when i hooked up a flathead. It wasnt a big fish and i had landed it and bagged it within a minute or two. When i looked around my kayak buddy was nowhere to be seen. The waves had now picked up to probably around a foot or more and it was definitely time to head back in behind the wall. For a minute or so i searched in the area we had been drifting and just could not see my mate. He had a lot less experience than me, and was not as confident on the water (he fell in twice when he first tried my Kingy back when i got it). I was just starting to dread that he may have fell in when i seen him bobbing between the waves about 300 meters away and a few 100 meters out into the bay compared to our previous drifts.

This situation just goes to show how hard it can be to spot a yak even when you know roughly where to look, and the guy was in a bright yellow 12 foot kayak. Sure someone a bit higher up, maybe on the flybridge of a cruiser, could probably see him from a mile away. But what about the guy speeding along in a tinny or a jetski with the wind and spray in their eyes.

Too right. It surprises me when you can go to popular yak spots at dawn, count a dozen or so yaks hitting the water. within a short period of timer most of them seem to have disappeared from sight. Often you sit on the yak and shore doesn't look too far, then when you get back and look where you were it seems like miles out, and you would have been invisible from shore without a flag.

I reckon too many yakkers have their flags too low as well

just noticed the pics have gone missing, Ill have to dig them out and post again on the first post

My flag is about 1 metre above the water. I am using an old surf rod tip as my pole.

I use an orange electrical conduit as a pole about 2 m long and clip it to the rocket launcher on my yak.
I have an orange flag on one end and a Alpha dive flag on the other.
When yak fishing I clip the conduit on to the rocket launcher with the orange flag on the top.
When yak diving I clip the conduit on to the rocket launcher with the Alpha flag on the top.