Relocating from Houston TX to Anchorage AK!

Hello all.

As the title says, I'm planning to relocate from Houston Texas to Anchorage Alaska within a few months through work.

I'm 34 as of the time of this post, married with 2 kids ages 3 years and 5 months

I know pretty much nothing about kayaking in the North other than it's a little colder up there than it is down here

Oh, I don't know what fish are up there either other than Salmon, Halibut, and Rainbow trout; and no idea on how to go about catching them. So please forgive me in advanced if I sound like a total newb.

As for my kayak, I've got a 12' Sit on Top Heritage Redfish currently. I'm hopeful it will at least be useable up there but I'm seeing I will need to invest in a drysuit at the very least. I've been lurking the forum a bit and see some folks have used smaller paddle type SOTs so I think I'm good to go.

My fishing experience from a kayak is somewhat limited. I started maybe two years ago. I had originally bought it to help with bait deployment for surf fishing to catch Bull Reds and Sharks (we managed a few). I have some experience with paddling Beyond the Breaker with launching and landing (and rolling!) the kayak in surf. I tried to fish some BTB but none of my friends have kayaks so I was always solo and had no idea what the heck I was doing; so I've never caught anything BTB.
I have fished the salt flats some and have been marginally successful.
Due to family (young son and a new baby last year!) I haven't had much chance to use it, but I'm always itching to get back on the water whenever I can fool my wife that I have to "work on the weekend."

So, my objective for registering an account here - I really way to explore what Alaska has to offer once I move up there. I'm hoping I can get to meet people that would be willing to let a newby tag along and make a bunch of mistakes - but we'll cross that bridge when we get there I'm not just limiting myself to kayak fishing too. Ice fishing and trout fishing sounds fun.

For now I'd just like to learn the basics, ask questions, etc.
Also I'd like to know what gear I should pick up while I'm still in the lower 48. I hear shipping to AK can be expensive.

Oh, and as you might have guessed, I have a tendency to ramble on forums :\ So I'll shut up now!

Hello and welcome! After looking at your yak it you should be fine.  I have seen a couple of people out there with smaller, and  my hobie is only a couple inches wider. You can upgrade if you want to a larger yak but its not essential.  I do a lot of lake and river fishing and am just getting into the ocean scene on my kayak so there are quite a few guys who are much better than me on here.  As for fish to catch you hit the vast majority of them a couple more we have up here are Rockfish, lingcod and pollock/Cod and salmon sharks in the salt.  Fresh water we have dolly varden, pike, grayling, burbot, lake trout, and artic char.  There are 5 species of salmon that can be caught in both salt and fresh, king/chinook the largest, chum/dog salmon, red/sockeye, silver/coho and pink/humpy. Rod wise for most of this i use a baitcaster, conventional or fly rod depending on what i am doing.  Amazon is you best friend up here and if you want to buy anything with a lithium battery (they will not ship them here) or is large buy it down there.  If you wanted to upgrade your boat do it down there its a couple hundred for shipping and sometimes you pay the alaska cost of a few extra bucks.  Good luck and if you need anything PM me and i can let you know.  I have driven up a couple of times.

Awesome, thanks for the tips.

I do surf fishing a lot down here so I own 3 stout medium/ medium heavy action rods about 7'; and also a heavy action 10' rod we mostly use for casting large chunks of bait and leaving in a sand spike. Not sure if surf fishing is popular up there?

I see that a drysuit is highly recommended. Is that something easily bought up there or is that better to order online while I can still get free shipping? The soft neck type sounds like the way to go, but is it any good if it starts raining while you are out drifting a river or on the lake?

Welcome Chubby Chu, I'm somewhat new to yak fishing myself, been into it for two seasons now.  Most folks go with the semi-dry suits with neoprene necks for comfort.  Kokatat is #1 with Stohquist a close runner-up.  Don't forget a good quality PFD.  Check out kardinal_84's sites for a lot of great info. And like and follow Alaska Outdoor Journal on Facebook.

https://sites.google.com/site/kayakfishingalaska/
http://guidesak.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AlaskaOutdoorJournal/