Looking for a kayak vacation? We just got back from an Apostle Islands vacation with the Hobie Outfitter, and it was a fantastic trip. The ability to sail, along with taking the sail down and pedaling, is idea for touring the sea caves in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior. For some detailed information about planning a kayak Apostle Island trip, here's a web site with some info:
http://www.nps.gov/apis/planyourvisit/index.htm
When we rolled into Bayfield, Wisconsin, we visited the Coast Guard station to get a weather report. It's important for the winds to be light if you want to venture into the caves, so it's a good idea to get a report along with looking at the wind reports from weather underground and the wind reports from Devils Island:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php? ... _label=CDT
The first day was too windy to try the caves, so we took the ferry to Madeline Island and took the Outfitter on top of our SUV for fishing in the Big Bay Lagoon. The best entry point for the lagoon is using the Town Park on the north side of the lagoon because it has a parking lot that is close to the water and it's free to enter the park. (There is also an excellent beach there). The park to the south of the lagoon is a state park and costs $10. You do need to carry the yak down some steep stairs and across a bridge, but it wasn't too bad. We caught four Northern Pike in a couple hours and had a blast cruising around the lagoon. The picture below is of the bridged and mouth of the lagoon.
The Outfitter was getting a lot of attention, which wasn't too appreciated by the yak renter at the bay, since they didn't have any Hobies. I think the renters were getting lots of requests for Hobies because The Minnesota Bound TV show just ran a special on fishing in Hobies on Madeline Island, and several people saw the show. (By the way, the fishing guide on the show said to use white spinners, which is what we successfully used.) We were the only one's catching fish, all caught by trolling, nothing by casting for some reason. The north and east part of the lagoon had the most action, and we did see bass feeding on the surface in the weeds, just couldn't catch any of them.
The next day the winds were light, 2-4 mph on Devils Island, (2 mph or less where we were), and we headed for the sea caves. We left the kayak launch west of the NPS dock at Little Sand Bay (Parking lot, GPS: N46°56’43.0â€