[MikeF-NH]

3 Mile and over to "The Beavers" are great smallmouth waters. Fish should be up shallow early and the water calm enough to paddle your yak without a lot of big wake waves from passing boats and water skiers etc. You should be able to get a good topwater bite AND be able to hook into fish on jigs at depths under 20 feet which is some cases is pretty close to shore. Mostly rocky bottoms around there. its a decent paddle back to 3 mile from The Beavers so plan to be back before 9ish when things will get dicey.

You can also take a shorter trek across "open" water to the north side of Pine Island...only a couple of hundred yards of paddling to cross from the south end of 3 mile to the north end of Pine. You can fish along the north shoreline of Pine then tuck in between Pine and the mainland and fish loads of docks in that area.

All said, you can probably do as well at 3 mile as you can the other two so there is no need to do all that paddling if you are on them. I would not recommend a paddle across to Black Cat as it could be dangerous paddle back with power boat traffic from Center Harbor heading to the Broads.

Salmon in July are deep. You might get a short bite in the morning on top but most are targeting 20-35 feet by then. Trolling is most common and thats tough in a yak. In calm conditions, some guides have turned to jigging for lakers. I think AJ at AJs bait and tackle can probably talk to you about this and offer some good jigs for the task. I believe light braid is required to feel the strike and set the hook. Must be dead calm though. Might be hard without electronics to find the fish. I'd stick with smallies.

I like the Bizer for my boat and live by Navionics. If you are looking for humps etc, they both have great bathymetry detail. A GPS may help you getting on top of these....I think Navionics has a phone app which would be more useful for finding and landing on humps as it would integrate your phone GPS with their map.

For bait: topwaters in the morning over to football jigs tipped with plastics, carolina rigs (if you can work them with your equipment), weighted plastics etc in the afternoon. Spinnerbaits and cranks will also work though I seldom use them on Winni. The area you are fishing is mostly rocky bottom so expect to lose some gear if you are getting to bottom from time to time.

While I would recommend leaving the shore at the very first hint of light, be careful because there are boats cruising through that area at first light heading to salmon waters so some sort of light is not only legally required but also a good idea.