Part I
Your overall kayak fishing experience depends first and foremost on your physical well being – You want perfect comfort regardless of where you fish, and for how long.
Fishing kayaks can compete with bigger boats in price, portability, maintenance, ease of use, and in some cases mobility, but they fail when it comes to comfort and other ‘fishability’ factors, with one exception: our patented, well tested Wavewalk fishing kayaks.
Comfort is multi-dimensional – like yourself, and it starts with stability and ergonomics. This article discusses fishing kayaks from a particular standpoint – yours.
What can you really expect from kayak fishing?
And is it what you really want?…
Native people have been using small, personal paddle craft for fishing out of necessity, as means for survival but this is probably not your case, so what is it that draws you to kayak fishing? Obviously, you like fishing as an outdoor, fun, both relaxing and exciting activity. That makes you a candidate for traditional fishing from shore or from a motorboat, so why consider fishing kayaks in the first place?
Compared to bigger boats, fishing from a canoe or a kayak offers the following advantages:
Portability– unlike bigger and heavier boats, most canoes and kayaks can be car topped and do not require a towing trailer.
convenience the hassle of launching and beaching is considerably reduced.
Mobility- you can launch and beach kayaks in more locations, and access very shallow waters. However, motorized boats have a bigger range of operation.
Low Cost- both cost of purchase and cost of maintenance of kayaks, including stand up fishing kayaks are minimal.
Physical Exercise –something you get from paddling but not from motor boating.
Why is it that some people prefer kayaks to canoes, and why choose a kayak over other, traditional fishing paddle crafts?
Good question indeed, considering most people who fish from paddle crafts still prefer canoes and other traditional boats for fishing since those are usually made bigger than kayaks… Nevertheless, fishing kayaks offer some advantages that most canoe and other traditional boats don’t:
Ease of use- paddling and controlling your boat with a double blade (‘kayak’) paddle is easier to learn than paddling and controlling it with a single blade (‘canoe’) paddle, especially if you’re paddling solo.
Less windage – Most canoe models are quite big and have an open cockpit stretching all the way from bow to stern, which tends to cause a windage problem: The user finds it difficult to progress and steer his/her boat under wind conditions. Kayaks are generally less problematic when it comes to wind, unless they are very long and/or wide: Being long increases the wind’s leverage on the boat, and being wide makes it hard to propel it efficiently as well as track and maneuver. Unfortunately, a reasonably good fishing kayak must be wider than recreational and touring kayaks in order to offer more stability and support.
Portability– sit-in and sit-on-top kayaks are smaller and lighter than the average fishing canoe models since canoes today are usually made for more than one person.
Stand up kayak fishing – This new concept is becoming increasingly interesting for kayak anglers, but so far only Wavewalk kayaks have come up with a kayak that offers sufficient stability for this matter.
Motorized fishing kayaks – Yet another breakthrough in the sense that now it’s possible to outfit a fishing kayak with the real thing, that is a gas outboard engine, and not just an electric trolling motor.
