Some of you have already seen our video of the Venture Crew doing some Menpachi fishing at night. If you haven't, i'll be listing it again below. Mainly, I want to talk about what is some of the gear we use on the boat at night to help us be more effective and efficient.
Now let's dive right into it!
Lights
Lighting is hands down the most important thing to have on a boat at night. On the water everything is dark and hard to see what you're doing or where you're going. Rigging your boat with built in waterproof lights can be expensive and can wear over time if you mainly take your boat out during the day. Through a few trips we've found some gear that seems to work great for us without breaking the bank.
This Coranso portable work light is water proof, rechargeable and a power bank. It can be used as a stand, flood light or what we do is use a zip tie or gear tie to mount it to the T-Top so we can have 2000 lumens of pure light right over the deck. I ran it for about 5 hours straight on both light settings and still had battery left. I plan to use it for night fishing, camping and any other adventure.
Purchased on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2XLk7pF
Another very important thing to have is a headlamp to illuminate what you're looking at and what you're doing. There are hundreds of different type of headlamps, but I went with this one. It's water proof, rechargeable and when the lithium battery dies you can remove the battery and insert 3 triple A batteries to keep lit. There is multiple light settings up to 3500 lumens with all 5 bulbs lit. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the red light setting which fish aren't able to see but with it's versatility, I didn't mind not having that function. I ran all 5 bulbs for about 4 hours straight until it started getting dim then switched out to triple A batteries and ran like a champ!
Purchased on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3dgUyTW
Air Pump for Live Bait
Once you're out on the water it's game on. We always send down live bait. I would say we lose more strikes than we land, but it's always worth the hunt! We go out before the sundown to catch smaller bait fish and send it on bigger rods hoping a predator swims by. For the most part the live bait holds well so we keep a few smaller fish alive with this Air pump.
It takes two D batteries and has a large gasket to prevent any water from going inside. I drilled two holes in our live bait bucket and put a zip tie through so I can mount the pump on the outside of the bucket from that clip on the pump. It works great for keeping 1-3 small bait fish alive all night & if that fish is lucky enough it'll be released back into the water because nothing took our live baits. They aren't selling this model at the moment but I found a supplementary one which has nearly the same specs.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/36IkQMd
Clothing
You may laugh at this, but to me it's highly effective. Normally I wear some type of comfortable surf shorts when we go night fishing, but the problem I found is that theres not enough pockets to hold extra lead, pliers or whatever else you need.
Aftco makes these fishing tactical shorts that are light weight, fast drying and they have a ton of pockets. Two back pockets, two front pockets, side pockets, plier pockets. I absolutely love these shorts. They are so comfortable to move around in, I started wearing them around the house too. They are pricy, but they were worth every penny!
Purchased on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3exsonK
One night we went out and it was supposed to be light winds and no rain. Guess what, there were high winds and a lot of rain. I busted out our packable windbreaker jacket which kept me protected from the cold winds and rain. Best part about this jacket is from the front pouch you can put pack it into a small pouch to conserve space.
Purchased on Venture Wetsuits:
https://venturewetsuits.com/collections/mens/products/venture-wetsuits-packable-jacket
Filming
Aside from getting yourself ready to get out and catch some fish. Catching those memories on film are priceless. I am in the market to try new mounts and gear to see what works best. Here are some of the ones I use.
I use one GoPro on this Gorillapod which has flexible legs to wrap around and grip onto parts of the both. The struggle I found with it is that if the surface is already wet it's hard to grip on.
Puchased on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2TR2hjT
But this neck mount on the other hand was an awesome piece of equipment. It gives great point of view angles and it's lightweight enough for me to wear it the entire night without being bothered by it on. In the photo it shows the camera upside because when you edit you can rotate the video correctly. Instead I faced the GoPro upward so I can kind of see the shot i'm getting on the GoPro. In the video, the point of view shots are all from this. I know theres a chest pad and head mount but i'd thought give this on a shot.
Purchased on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Mhpkjr
That's just some of the gear I like to use, i'd love to hear what you think or what you recommend! List in the comments below and get out there and catch some fish!
