NC Angler Fishing Blogs

I did not set out to become a kayak fisherman. I never envisioned myself on a kayak at all. I'm not the size or shape for agile craft and small spaces. And I just want to fish - I'm not looking for joyrides and not interested in paddling myself and my gear miles into the backcountry to camp and fish. If I'm in the water I want lines in the water.

I'd seen touring kayaks on TV - long, thin, tippy looking missles with people zipped into them with watertight skirts, legs trapped in the tube. Nautically, they're beautiful with the long lines and the silent glide. But not the kind of thing you'd ever be able to stuff me into. I'd seen whitewater kayaks on TV - short, tippy looking things with people zipped into them with watertight skirts, bouncing off boulders in a river. They might have appealed to me 25 years ago, but my golden days as a teenage daredevil are long gone. I'd also seen the eskimo roll - where the kayak flips upside down, rider underwater then he flips himself back over to the top. I couldn't imagine a better way to lose tackle.

The whole idea of a kayak seemed like the most far-fetched fishing platform imaginable. I was wrong, or at least under-educated. There's an entire class of kayaks built around the recreational paddler and the fisherman that make excellent platforms to fish out of, give you places to store your gear and allow for the use of advanced technology. I thought I'd take some space in this post to discuss some of the myths and misunderstandings I had to overcome with kayaks and their place in fishing.


Myth/Misunderstanding 1: Kayaks are too tippy to fish from. The first and biggest thing to overcome with the kayaks is stability. Some kayaks ARE NOT suitable to fish from. The touring and whitewater kayaks are certainly prone to tippiness. Touring because they're so skinny which gives them long-range efficiency, whitewater because they're so short and rounded for use in such rough conditions and needing to be able to get themselves righted when they do go over. As a fisherman, you really wouldn't want to spend so much energy keeping your balance. That's where the current generation of recreational and fishing kayaks pay off - they're surprisingly stable.

For a simple picture of stability you can think about the most primitive types of floating craft, the single log and the raft (some number of logs tied together). Being perfectly round on the bottom, the log doesn't have any lateral stability. A raft, on the other hand, has plenty of lateral stability. Add some outriggers to a single log, and you can keep it from tipping. Most people picture something closer to the shape of a log when they think about kayaks - skinny from side to side and round on the bottom. A good touring kayak might look like that, to give itself the least resistance in the water.



Build a plastic skin around the shape of the raft or the outrigger in the diagram above and you've got a pretty good picture of the midsection of today's fishing kayaks. Most are around 30 inches wide and some up to 36 inches wide. Several models are well known to support fishing and poling from a standing position.

Digging deeper, we find two measures of stability in kayaks - primary (or initial) and secondary. Primary stability indicates how "tippy" the boat feels under normal operation (the scientific definition has to do with how much it resists changes to buoyancy). A boat with low primary stability will require better body balance and more correction to fight its tendency to lean and over-correct. The log has terrible primary stability - it just wants to spin. If you correct it, it will spin in the other direction. A raft has great primary stability - it wants to sit flat on the water. But a raft pushes a whole lot more water than a log, so its not nearly as efficient to move through the water.

Secondary stability is how much the boat will fight actually flipping over. Again, the log won't fight at all - it just rolls right over - it has very poor secondary stability. The kayak with the most secondary stability will be the one with the most buoyancy farthest from its keel (like the raft or the outrigger). That extra buoyancy on the outside edge is what pushes back against the desire to flip.

Here's a picture of the underside of my Heritage Redfish. Notice how flat it is through its entire width. That gives it great primary stability - it has no inclination to tip in either direction. And because of its width, it is very hard to get the center of gravity out over either edge, making it very difficult to tip (high secondary stability).

Here's the bottom of a Perception Search. It has more of a keeled, rounded bottom. You notice immediately upon sitting in it that it is ready to roll slightly in either direction and you have to use a little more body control to keep it vertical. But because of its width, as you get it leaning on one direction or another, you find that it's pretty good at locking in and fighting the urge to tip completely over. It has significantly less primary stability than the redfish, but still plenty of secondary stability.

Being hard to tip is not the same as being impossible to tip. And you can still fall off the things, even if they don't tip all the way over. Safety must always be a primary consideration and you must dress for the worst case scenario. But if you've never been in one, I suspect you'd be surprised at the stable fishing platform offered by today's fishing kayaks.



Myth/Misunderstanding 2:Kayaks are uncomfortable. The next thing to look at is comfort. To me, that picture of a paddler zipped into his boat, legs stuck straight forward with no wiggle room seems like a miserable way to sit, much less try and fish. The recreational fishing kayaks are much different. There are 2 classes - Sit-Inside Kayaks (SIKs) and Sit-on-Top Kayaks (SOTs).

The SIKs are similar to the traditional touring kayak in that the seat is on the inside and the legs are inside the boat, but the cockpit opening is much larger and there is much more room inside. Usually no skirt is used so there's plenty of space for getting your legs comfortable, shifting positions and storing gear. The sit-in's are deeper and often have very comfortable and supportive seats. A popular option is using a tandem sit-inside for solo fishing - lots more room for yourself and your stuff, plus you can take a partner (designated paddler?) from time to time.


Sit-on-Tops evolved as much from surfboards as kayaks - the top is molded with a seat area and space carved out in front of you to rest your legs and feet. The interior space between the top and bottom houses air and stored gear, not the paddler. Want to stretch your legs? no problem. Want to straddle the kayak and hang feet in the water on either side? no problem. Want to spin around and sit side-saddle? no problem. Most have seat pads and backs to provide cushioning and lumbar support. Not quite like spending the afternoon on the living room sofa, but not too bad either. Plenty of freedom to shift positions and hop off to wade or stretch.

Both Sit-in and Sit-on kayaks usually have some kind of adjustable footpegs, which allow you to support your legs in the most comfortable and effective position.

Even big people can find room on a fishing kayak. My Heritage Redfish has 400lbs of capacity. The Ocean Kayak Prowler Big Game has 550 lbs of capacity. The Malibu X-factor has 625 pounds of capacity and is a favorite dive platform. A 300lb guy could easily transport himself, 100 lbs of gear and 100 lbs of fish in a boat like that. (catching it and getting it loaded onto the boat is his problem!). Several others like the Wilderness Systems Ride and Hobie outback are in the 400+ range.

You never want to load a kayak to its limit as that will reduce stability and margin for error (how do I know? See this review in the kayak section of our reviews page... luckily, its good for a laugh).



Myth/Misunderstanding 3: There's no room to take any of my stuff. If the only kayaks you are familiar with are the skirted tourers & whitewater boats, you're likely to ask where you'd keep your tackle and how you'd get to it on the water. Fear not - there's plenty of room and convenience on a typical fishing kayak:



Many kayak anglers use crates for keeping gear contained in the tankwell. They're easy to store at home, easy to carry to and from the kayak and easy to attach to the boat. They can be outfitted with all sorts of accessories, like rod holders, zippered covers with pockets, etc... I can carry several plano boxes full of tackle, various necessities like an anchor, scale, sunscreen/bugspray, first aid and emergency equipment. Some kayak anglers use their tankwells for larger coolers, bait buckets or livewells (large soft-side coolers are often used to keep the day's catch fresh on ice). There are mounting spaces for additional rod holders, fish finders, gps devices, cup holders or anything else you would want.



The plastic kayaks are very easy to work with. The hardest part is getting past the mental block over drilling the first hole in the boat, but after that it becomes 2nd nature. Some folks are minimalists and try to keep their kayak as pristine as possible. Others bolt every accessory that you'd find on a big boat onto their kayaks - lights, bilges, fish finders, gps's, marine radios, livewells, baitwells, bait tables, downriggers, etc...



Myth/Misunderstanding 4: You can't use them in cold weather. Granted they're not for every day, but neither are power boats. Wetsuits, drysuits and waders+dry tops offer protection from reasonable elements. Kayak fishing has been a 12 month activity in the Carolinas for me, but I'm much more careful about picking my days to go when the water is cold. I have not suffered an accident yet, but am always prepared for the worst, and am always becoming more prepared as I accumulate and upgrade gear. With enough time on the boat, sooner or later I'm bound to make the wrong move at the wrong time and find myself overboard in the cold water.

Wetsuits are the cheapest solution, but they're pretty much a rescue-only solution. Wetsuits will insulate you in the water, extending your ability to retain body heat while submerged, but they lose their effectiveness out of the water. If you did take a tumble wearing only a wetsuit for protection, air temps will dictate if that's the end of the fishing trip and the start of a direct trip to the launch or the nearest protection from the elements.



The waders & dry top seems to be the most popular and flexible solution. The dry top has gaskets at the waist, wrists and neck. Not the most comfortable thing in the world but it will keep the rush of water out in the case of a dunking. The bonus is that you can get in and out of the water to stretch and wade fish. You can also use the waders when not kayaking.



Full dry-suits are the premium in both cost and protection, and the way to go if you're counting on getting soaked and continuing to fish, such as winter surf launches for ocean stripers.



Summary: I would never tell you that kayak fishing is for everybody. It does take lifting to get the kayaks loaded and unloaded, coordination to get in and out of the boat safely, stamina to paddle the boat out to the fishing grounds (and get back home!), and dexterity to reach things in different areas of the boat while you're fishing. It takes patience to go at the pace of the paddle and an ability to be satisfied with the areas you can launch and reach. There's an increased element of risk due to the small size of the craft. But by the same token, I would hate for somebody to think that kayaks don't have any place in fishing. A kayak can be a serious fishing machine, able to get places other boats cannot, but also very able to fish in open water among larger boats, waves and wakes. Best of all you get great exercise and a chance see the world from a new perspective ...



. . . close to the water !


(as always, if you see something you question, please leave a comment or send me a PM)