I would say about 60 percent of the time,
I prefer to use a kayak to fish. They are stealthy, easy to load and unload, provide great exercise, and in some cases,
its easier to approach a fish in water that would be inaccessible by boat.
I've owned some traditional design
canoes, but when I say the word canoe here, I'm referring to the square stern variety. I use a Sportspal and have owned
a few Radisson canoes as well. The design on these two brands of canoe is very similar, almost identical, but
the Sportspal has a thicker guage metal. The advantage to both, is that even though they are closer in class to an actual
boat in stability and function, they are in a lightweight class all by themselves which makes them ideal for cartopping and
launching off banks that would be inaccessible to trailered boats or even heavier cartop boats.
Getting back to kayaks, I got hooked back
in 2001, when my sister gave me a Prijon Yukon Tour, the older version of the current Yukon Expedition. The two of us have
seen a lot of river time together and its still my number one kayak for fishing. I've owned more than a few kayaks since the
beginning of my addiction, and you'll see some here.
The advantage of a sit on top vs sit inside
kayak is in being able to get on and off much easier, which is great if you wade a lot, and the sit inside requires some self
rescue skill in case you capsize with the inside of the cockpit filling up with water. To be honest I just love kayaks of
either type, although as I get older, the sit on top is safer and preferred if I'm going to be fishing bigger water.
The advantage of being able to stand and
sight fish in a stable square stern canoe that is also light in weight is a big one. Some of the big fish I caught this year
I saw and anticipated before setting the hook - fish I wouldn't have seen sitting low in a kayak. Its much closer to fishing
in a boat - definitely not a paddle craft like the kayak. I'll use a canoe paddle just to shove off at the launch or pole
along in shallow water to get through some weedbeds or shallow gravel areas. An actual push pole is on order for the coming
year.
Click here to see pics of my kayaks and
canoes, past and present -
