How to keep fish fresh on a kayak: OMER Fish Cooler Bag

There are many factors that come into play when choosing which method to use such as the size of your kayak, the weather, the water and the type of fish you’re catching.
There are a lot of methods, some people use stringers, others use hard coolers or fish bags.
Stringers work but pose some problems if the water is too warm or if predators are present where you fish.
The ideal solution is to keep the fish on ice particularly when you’re fishing in the summer months or warmer months.
You can use hard sided coolers in a kayak too, but limited storage facilities and limited access to the storage facilities due to the sitting position often make this impractical.
On my opinion, the absolute best place to keep fish cool and contained in a fishing kayak is in a water tight cooler bag with ice, particularly when you’re fishing in the summer months or warmer months.
Fish bags are insulated bags that perfectly fit in your kayak, whether on the floor or in the hull storage.
They’re very lightweight and can hold ice for hours.
Made with HF sealed PVC with zipper and roll on top closure for dry effect. Great features to ensure that fish is kept to the highest standard while out fishing in the hot sun.
The thing I like most of soft side cooler is that they can be manipulated to fit into a space, they weigh less than an hard cooler, so it would definetly help to reduce weight.
To keep the temperature low, you can put inside the bag ice cubes, ice packs or plastic bottles with ice water.
I prefer to use ice cubes which I keep in a plastic container inside a cooler bag until needed.
When you keep the ice more compact it’s gonna last longer throughout the day, so I will not put the ice in the bag untill I catch a fish.
If I don't fish anything I can reuse the leftover ice cubes at the end of the day by putting them in a plastic container to put in the freezer.
So I catch a fish, put it in a garbage bag, this will not only reduce odor, but also eliminate slime in your fishing bag, and then a I open the bag of ice and put it inside the fish bag and put it over the fish.
The ideal spot to put a cooler bag on a sit-on-top kayak is right behind your seat on the flat deck space. It’s easy to reach, out of the way and easily secured to the boat in that location.
Some advices:
• Keep it within easy reach
• Don’t bury it – Leave your cooler bag accessible.
• Make it secure, so you don’t loose it if you flip
• Size it right – Makes sure to buy a cooler bag that is appropriately sized to the fish you keep most often.
Remember, space is limited so avoid oversized bags that take up precious cargo space.
Stringers can be useful if you know that the fishes you catch aren’t going to be on the stringer for more than an hour or so where surface water temperatures don’t exceed 26°C, until you can properly refrigerate them.
Fish stringers are not as good as cooler bags in a kayak for several reasons:
1st. Stringers add resistance when paddling a kayak, make your kayak slower and less able to track straight. It’s hard enough to troll, fight current and steer a kayak as it is. Add a stringer full of fish dragging alongside and it gets much harder.
2nd. Stringers don’t keep fish fresh in warm water. During summer, high temperatures cause the meat going soft and you loose flavor.
3rd. Stringers with fish on them attract predators. Dying, bleeding fish floating by your kayak could attract sharks, seals or gators.
Cooler bags eliminate every one of the above problems associated with stringers. If you are fishing from a kayak, give up the stringer and switch to a cooler bag with ice.
Hard sided coolers are an obvious choice for most anglers to store fish and generally provide more insulation than soft coolers. The problem is there is generally not much room on a kayak to put one. Sit-on-top kayaks usually have sufficient deck space for mounting a small cooler to put fish in. Keep in mind that a hard sided cooler really limits the size of fish you can put in there.
Cooler bags hold bigger fish. They are more versatile than hard-sided coolers and can be strapped onto your kayak in your preferred location.
They’re also much lighter than hard coolers, which makes them great for anglers that like to cover a lot of distance and don’t want to add unnecessary weight to their kayak setup.
I kill the fish with the insertion of a spike quickly and directly into the brain, causing immediate brain death in an Ike-Jime like way, the Japanese fish killing technique.
It could look cruel, but this method is considered to be the fastest and most humane method of killing fish.
A quick kill will improve meat quality by keeping the fish from thrashing around and bruising the meat. Also, a fish that dies quickly does not emit toxins into the meat like a slow death does.
Then I cut the gills with sharp scissors or a knife. It is best to do this while the fish is still in your net and in the water. Cutting the gills will result in better tasting meat.