Welcome to the Hotrod Gheenoe Fishing Blog

My name is Lou Kapp and I like to fish.
I started fishing in saltwater about 3 years ago after moving to the Tampa Bay area in 1999. I lived here for several years and was an avid golfer playing 4 or 5 days a week. I had been interested in fishing in saltwater but had no idea where to start. I have fished in freshwater from as far back as I can remember for channel catfish, bass, blue gill etc. One of my earliest memories is of fishing with my great grandparents in farm ponds and lakes in west central Illinois.

I finally got the chance to go fishing in the bay after one of my regular golf partners bought a boat and asked me If I would like to go fishing. We went out that first day and I caught 3 slot redfish, and I tell you I had never had a fish fight anything like it. I was instantly addicted. Instead of playing golf on weekends I would go fishing with him any time I had the chance. I went and bought a used boat of my own a few months later.

It was a 1985 18 foot center console with a 150 hp. Mercury outboard, a livewell that would flood the deck of the boat and lights that didnt work... a real piece of crap. I put a lot of time and effort and money into the boat to get it ship shape and decided I didnt like it because I couldnt go to fish the areas I wanted to fish with it since it had too deep of a draft to fish the flats and back waters of Tampa Bay.

6 months later I sold the boat and took the money and bought a couple kayaks. Kayaks are great fishing platforms and I spent many mornings and days fishing the flats in one of my kayaks. Kayaks have many advantages over boats. They are easy to launch and when your done, you just toss it in the back of a pickup truck. You can clean them up in a few minutes and keep them in a garage. They can be outfitted with almost any kind of fishing accessories you could ever need. Their #1 advantage for the flats fisherman though is that you can silently sneak up on the fish in the shallowest of water. However they have some disadvantages as well. The average kayaker cannot stand up and fish in a kayak. They are slow, and you have to paddle them. (which is also a good thing as it is good exercise) They are also easy to flip due to poor balance on the part of the paddler, errors on the part of the paddler, and most importantly due to rough water and high winds. Safety is paramount to boating, but especially to kayaking.

I really enjoyed kayaking but one day a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go fishing for sheepshead in his new boat. It was a gheenoe. It was 15'6 long and 55 inches wide with a 15 hp mercury outboard. It drafted about 10 inches with the motor down and best of all it would run about 20 mph and could go almost anywhere a kayak could go only a lot faster. We had a great day fishing catching lots of big sheepshead. I believe we ended up keeping 12 that day, and we threw back at least as many as we caught. The minimum size for a sheepshead is 12 inches. We only kept the ones over 16 inches.

Me with two nice keeper sheepshead.

My buddy Sam with a big sheepshead

Our take for the day.

And that was all it took for me to decide that I needed a gheenoe of my own... Well according to my wife I didnt need it...But I definitely wanted one.

As luck would have it, on New Years Eve 2005, I decided to go on an overnight party boat trip to the middle grounds on the Friendly Fisherman II out of Hubbards Marina. I was catching lots of porgies, grunts and barely legal mangrove snapper and throwing them back. The guy fishing next to me wasnt haveing quite as good luck as me and asked me if he could have my fish that I didnt want, so I started putting them on his stringer. Between fishing stops we struck up a conversation and somehow I got on the subject of fishing on my friends gheenoe. He said he knew what a gheenoe was, and in fact he had one that he was trying to sell. So I got his number and a couple weeks later drove all the way to Naples to check out his gheenoe. I bought it. It was a 2001 in perfect condition. It had a 25 hp yamaha engine, a trolling motor, casting decks front and back and a brand new trailer. Quite a deal too.

I outfitted it with a jack plate, and a livewell, got rid of the casting decks and dubbed it the Hotrod Gheenoe after someone got in a flame war with me on one of the fishing websites that I frequent said that "You go flying around in that Hotrod Gheenoe of yours..." and I liked the name so I kept it.

Now its October, Ive had the boat for nearly 10 months and I usually fish 5 days a week, monday thru friday and occasionally get out on weekends as well. Not to brag, but I have been getting pretty good at finding and catching fish and the excitement is starting to wear off. Now I get a thrill out of taking other people fishing in my boat and trying to help them catch fish. I have never asked anyone for a dime to go fishing in my boat other than asking them to bring ice for my cooler if they plan on keeping anything to take home and eat. I personally dont keep many fish because if I did I would never be able to eat them all and my family doesnt particularly like to eat them either. I will keep an occasional redfish as I really enjoy eating them, and I will rarely keep a snook as well as they are very good tablefare as well. I dont keep speckled trout because they are usually too small and they were pretty much wiped out last year by red tide.

I am considering getting my captains license and starting a charter business to help defray the costs of my fishing addiction and to save up some money so I can buy a bigger boat. I want to get a 16 foot Hell's Bay Whipray or maybe an 18 foot East Cape Canoe Lostmen. Whatever it is it will have to fit in my garage... Not really looking for a big boat, just something big enough to take more than 1 other person fishing and still get in the shallow water.