Kayak Fishing is a Pain in the.......

Low back and butt. At least thats how it feels for me right now. I am often guilty of doing what my head says to do instead of listening to my body. Last week, while out catching bait, I felt a familiar pain. It is a pain I often get when I have been pedaling the kayak too much. It starts in my upper left buttocks and works its way down my left leg. Usually I just stop and rest or call it a day when I feel this pain, but the skipjack were biting well that day and I kept going. I was a little sore when I got home that afternoon but the pain was well worth the bait I was able to catch.

The real problem started the next day. No, I didn't wake up crippled the next morning. I was a little sore but nothing unbearable. My problem was that I wanted to go fishing again. I decided to take it easy and just do some ultralight fishing close to the launch so I wouldn't have to pedal very much. Naturally, I took my skipjack gear and a cooler just in case.

After a few minutes of ultralight fishing, I noticed some skips chasing shad a few hundred yards away. If I was smarter, I would have just let them be and continued on with my original plan. That just isn't my style though, so off I went chasing that school of skipjack. I knew I would pay the price later but the thought of catching more bait was too strong.

I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon catching skipjack and pedaling several miles in the process. What started out as a dull ache in my upper left buttock had gotten dang near unbearable by the time I got back to the launch. I decided I would accept the reality that I am getting a little older and take the next day off to rest and let my body heal. It sounded like a good plan anyways. Unfortunately, I didn't feel any better the next day or the day after for that matter. It wasn't until Wednesday of this week that I got to feeling a little better.

What did I do on Wednesday? You guessed it. I loaded up the kayak and hit the river. It was a pretty uneventful day of fishing. I only caught one blue cat. Unfortunately, while my head had said it was time to fish again, my body apparently wasn't quite ready and I have been paying the price for it. My lower back and upper left buttock have been sore ever since. I am quite certain that I have sciatica which is pain due to the sciatic nerve, which runs down your lumbar spine and through the buttocks, being irritated or pinched.

This time I am going to listen to my body and stay out of the kayak until I am completely healed. While I may be taking a break from kayak fishing, there is no rest for the weary. I am leaving out this afternoon for a previously planned vacation in Las Vegas where I will be walking long distances every day. Needless to say, I will be taking a bottle of Ibuprofen with me.

While I consider myself to be in great cardio shape, I am often guilty of not taking the time to properly stretch. The older I get, the more important it is going to be that I take the time to do this. I am also going to have to do a better job of listening to my body. A normal day of kayak fishing is no problem for me. It is the days where I am pedaling 8-10 miles over the course of the day while trolling to locate schools of skipjack that is causing my issues. I have a plan for how I will handle that going forward that I will cover in a future post and most likely a video series. For now though, I am on the mend and will just have to live vicariously through all of you. Please wish me a speedy recovery with my pain in the ass.