Alpacka Explorer

I know a few places where monster black breams are hiding, and although I love the simplicity of wading, these places are only accessible by some sort of watercraft.

The Frankland River in the Walpole-Nornalup National Park is one example. It runs through a heavy forest where trees can grow over 70m tall, and the water is deep enough to hide those giants after falling down into the water.

The bank is very high, steep, and inaccessible, and wading is simply out of option. To fish the Frankland, I need to be able to float on the middle of the river.

大きなクロダイが住んでいる州南部の森林公園の中の川は、岸は高さ７０メートルにもなる木々で覆われていて、バンクから川へは、アクセスできません。

個人的にはウェーディングでの釣りが一番シンプルで良いのですが、この様な川では、ウェーディングできる場所が限られています。

倒れた巨大な木々が沈んでしまう程の深さのある川の場合、プカプカと水の上に浮かぶ事しか釣りをする手段がありません。

Alpacka Explorer

I have been looking for the right watercraft for me for some time, and after having a long thought and many discussions with my friends, I was deciding between a folding kayak, an inflatable kayak, and a packraft.

At the end, I bought a packraft called "Explorer" made by Alpacka Raft.

My first experience of a packraft wasn't positive. I bought one last year, and I later returned it to to the manufacturer as I wasn't happy with it in the end. So, I was bit skeptic about getting another packraft, at least for things I want to do.

As you can imagine, the packraft is like a donkey compared to speed and elegance of a kayak or canoe.  It is not easy to fish from compared to a float tube or a kickboat.

At the end, however I took a leap of faith to buy the raft from Alpacka Raft because it is the only watercraft that I can carry on my back on top of other camping and fishing gears to travel to places like Tasmania, New Zealand, Japan, and so on.


ガソリンで走る船と比べると、カヤックやカヌーなどは、環境にローインパクトかつ、釣り場へのアクセスや、魚を釣るまでのプロセスを楽しむフライフィシングのスタイルには合っていると思います。

カヤック、カヌー、またはフロートチューブ。色々なオプションがありますが、僕が出した答えは、一番軽くてシンプルなパックラフトです。

去年一度パックラフトを試したのですが、全く良い印象はありませんでした。一生懸命漕いでも風に流されてなかなか前に進みませんでしたし、両手がパドルでふさがって、釣りをするのは簡単ではありませんでした。

ただ、バックパックに船を入れて釣り歩いたり、旅行する事が出来る唯一のオプションは、パックラフトだけです。

という事で、Alpacka Raft社のExplorerというモデルを買いました。

The pointy back helps tracking and getting speed bit.

Here is my impression of the new raft after my test run on the weekend.

Compared to my previous raft, Explorer from Alpacka Raft has a longer and narrower body with a pointy stern which is a better design for speed and tracking, I think. 

My first raft was terrible on the water.  It was very hard to move forward and the whole thing kept spinning around from left and right.

On the other hand, I was able to paddle easier and straighter on the Alpacka Explorer. I paddled for an hour on a calm condition with a bit of sea breeze. The raft was moving on the water much better than I thought.  

I am new to a paddle sport, so I got no idea on a right paddling technique, but even with my awkward paddling stroke, it wasn't hard to catch up Mike while he was walking on the bank at a normal walking speed.


日曜日の午後は、風もそんなに無くテストするには良さそうだったので、早速進水式をしてきました。

去年試したラフトよりも、Alpacka Raftは、船体が長くて細めで、船尾部分が鳥のくちばしの様になっているので、直進性もスピードもある感じです。

僕は、パドリング初心者なので正しい漕ぎ方も分かりませんが、そんな適当なパドリングでも、岸を歩いている友達のペースと同じ位で進めます。Alpacka Raftによるとスピードは、時速は、４km位だそうです（カヤックのスピードと比べると半分位でしょうか）。

The river looked quite different from the raft.

I took my rod with me and fished bit from the raft as well.  The raft was very stable and it was easy to fly cast from it especially when I was standing on my knees.  

The problem was that the raft kept drifting fast with the wind and tide. It will be the same problem for any kayak, boats, etc, but I guess, it will be a bigger issue for the packraft for being so light. 

The good thing was that the raft was holding more less the same direction while it was drifting instead of spinning around like a spinning top. So, I was able to make a cast and fishing on the drift.  

I still love to be able to stop drifting or at least slow it down though. So I am going to try a couple of different things like a bag full of rocks as an anchor or drifting with a sea anchor next week.


パックラフトからの釣りも試してみましたが、ラフト自体はとても安定していてキャスティングには、問題はありません。

だたし、船体が軽いのと水面にポカンと浮いている状態なので、風と潮に簡単に流されます。それでも、クルクルと独楽の様に回転する事は無く、一定の方向を向いたまま流されるのでドリフトボートの様に流されながら釣ることはできかもしれません。

Tailor や kahawai の様に足の速い魚ならまだしも、時として一つのポイントへ絨毯爆撃しなくてはいけないクロダイの釣りには、やはり流されるスピードが速すぎるので、次の週末には、アンカーなりシーアンカーなりを試してみようと思います。

I can cross the deep channel to new territories now.

Weekend city outing

I went down to the city this weekend to do some shopping. I took my bicycle with me as I was planning to get off a train at half way point, and ride home along a river. 

Brompton is a great bike for this kind of walk about (or ride about, I should say).  It doesn't take up space on the train, and I don't get told off when I walk into shops with the bike fully folded.

My Brompton waiting for a train

The reason I went to Perth was to get a cable to connect a digital camera and iPod and iPhone. 

We have been using a class set of iPad as workstations for our digital photography classes for the past few weeks. Students take photos during the class, drop images onto iPad, do some post shooting adjustments, and print out images.  

We have adopted this work flow initially as a way to deal with an issue of not having enough computers in the classroom, but it has turned out to be a good simple process for students to follow than stuffing around with computers.

Anyway, as some kids already got their own iPod or iPhone, I thought that it will be handy, if we can do the same thing with other Mac devices.

So here I was at the Mac store explaining what I want to do to those friendly Mac people wearing blue Mac T-shirts, reminding me of people working at the Disney Land. 

I was soon disappointed when those blue elves working for the magic kingdom were telling me that it is not possible to connect a digital camera with iPod or iPhone. 

Apparently, the process only works with iPad not with anything else.  With iPod and iPhone, photo images have to go to a computer first, then transfer the images to each device by synching through iTune, the process is so slow and inflexible to me.

I asked them why it works with iPad but not with other Mac gadgets. They said, they don't know.  It seems to me that Apple's hardware compatibility is just so elementary. 

Perhaps Apple has become too greedy, and wants us to buy all of their products including  those overly priced Apple specific accessories which only work on certain devices.

Didn't Microsoft got sued for something similar? 

Happy Friday Fly Fishing

I came home, dropped my work bag, grabbed my fishing rod, and went fishing for an hour or so on Friday evening.

The wind was blowing strong, and the water was quite silty.  I wanted to fish with dark brown flies which work better in a dark water, but I forgot that I had lost all of them on the last weekend.

So, I started fishing with a couple of shrimp patterns instead, without having a high hope to catch fish.  On contrary to my skepticism though, the fishes were nailing my flies.

I don't know how fish can see such a small flies in such a murky water. It is just a mystery to me.

As the sun disappeared, I saw schools of bait fish looked to be being chased by a bigger fish.

So, I switched my fly to a bait fish pattern, and for 15 min or so, I was getting a series of short bites. Then one fish made a mistake to gulp the whole thing.  

I put the fish back into the water.  I was content.  So I came home.