Wavewalk Kayaks

We’re getting reports about people sailing, rowing, surfing, paddling and driving their W kayaks… -When we get enough pictures we publish a ’story’ page.  The latest story is from Vermont. It’s about Dan Carroll’s electric trolling motor system project for his 2007 W fishing kayak, a.k.a “The Mean Green Machine”.  We call it a ’system’ because it includes not only the motor but a clever, user friendly steering device as well.

Dan cruising in his electric W fishing kayak

And here’s the first fish Dan caught in his motorized W fishing kayak

Last year Scott Johnson from Minnesota bought a 2007 W fishing kayak that he’s used for photography and bow hunting (See full story).

This year Scott got himself a 2008 model.  With two W kayaks Scott can enjoy W kayak trips in the company of guests, and this time it was his nephew Justin, who’s also an avid hunter and fisherman.

Here is Scott’s report from their first W kayak trip this year: -”The rivers are finally coming down to a safe level but they are very stirred up and muddy. My nephew Justin and I went for our first paddle together yesterday.  More major erosion has widened out the river even further. When we started out we were on a 45 degree muddy incline - I positioned my 2008 Wavewalk kayak square to the water and said “This is how you get started” - a little thrust and I was on my way. I hit the water and bounced the front end a little but easily maintained my balance. Justin was grinning, he also managed the water slide entry with no problem. Going with the current is lots of fun but no work… We saw an eagle on a sandbar eating a fish, it took off and when we checked out the carp he was still flipping around. We had our fish poles but the river was so muddy it seemed pointless.

Justin paddling Scott’s 2007 W Fishing kayak

The important thing is we had a great time just cruising down the river. We are both impressed with the Wavewalk kayaks, they are very versatile. Temps were around 90 so a couple hours was enough. The next outing will be an all day, fishing, shore lunch on a nicer cleaner river. I found a manmade lake about 20 miles frome here. I geuss it has a sand bottom and is nice and clear. It has crappies and sunnies in it, maybe some good fishing will materialize soon!  -Scott”

John Putnam is a kayak fisherman from eastern Massachusetts who likes to fish the beaches and small lakes in the southeastern part of the state, where few other fishermen venture.  The access to those places is sometimes very difficult, and therefore requires an all-terrain solution for portaging.

A kayak or canoe trolley would be expensive and bulky to carry onboard, and might not be up to the task in particularly hard to access spots.

John’s DIY solution is simply brilliant: Use the W kayak as a wheelbarrow, with a wide wheel attached in the space below the hull tips. The wheel is mounted on a lightweight, plastic tube frame, which itself can be attached to the boat with just one strap going between the hulls.

John’s ‘all terrain’ 2007 W Fishing Kayak:

This is a picture sent by Fred, from North Carolina.

It was shot by a group of soldiers on a big fishing boat while they were on a vacation fishing trip organized by M.A.D.

Fred is currently experiencing with W kayak sailing… and we hope to get more pictures from him.

Thanks Fred!

Dan C, a Vermont resident, always wanted to fish standing up in a kayak. He tried all kinds of kayak designs that promised ’stand up kayak fishing’, just to find he couldn’t really stand in them and fish in full confidence - and not even at a reasonable level of comfort.
Earlier this year Dan bought himself a 2007 W fishing kayak, and this time he got exactly what he expected: He can stand up and fish comfortably and confidently even when some wind is blowing, and in the presence of eddies, and he can easily paddle standing.

Read Dan’s W Fishing Kayak Review. It shows some cool things that Dan did with his kayak in terms of rigging it for fishing.

These are pictures Dan sent from his latest fishing trip in Lake Champlain, Vermont.

Anyway on to the largest fish today. I had gotten out to cool off with a little wading when the big jack hit a minnow style plug. It was like trying to hold back a train. That fish hit with a quick flash and peeled off line against the drag. Thank heavens I was using a stiff bait cast rig with 16lb line. I was barely able to keep the fish from running right around the oyster beds.

Size wise it pulled lots harder than it looked but it’s still a nice sized jack for the inshore waters. The last shot is how a strong fish can actually bend a very strong saltwater treble hook almost open. A few more minutes on the line and this fish would have straighted the hooks and pulled loose.

Well, Nina managed to get that pink mini kayak for $400. It’s just her size. I gave her the high back air seat from the SOT kayak I won a couple of years ago at the Jacksonville classic kayak fishing tournament.

So it was yesterday we hit the water. The trip was a long one. Our adventure yesterday lasted around 12 hours of solid on the water time. Mostly touring and a little fishing. We traveled to find the end of Moses Creek from the intercoastal waterway. Got to the point we could go no further winding our way into narrow passages which at low tide we could only see down the water way the sides were too high. Sometimes we had to remove the rods and duck down under trees and brush. The area is known for gators and alike but we only heard crashing through the brush off to our sides ans saw none of them. A few times it was up and over logs just like on the W video.The W was right at home in those tight places. I should have thought to bring just Emmrods and it would have been easier. It got into the low 90s but water temps were still cool. All in all the W did the trip just fine. Twelve hours with limited getting out time is a long day but comfort wise it was great. With both boats rated in the 325 range she had me on the heavy load part. Speed wise I was a little faster over long range and would pull ahead over open water sections of the flats heading to the creek mouth.
I have found that for cleaning out the W after nasty trips like this one it’s easier to let the sand remaining inside after rinsing just dry out. Then it can be swept with a small brush and just scooped out of a the hulls. That way you get it all. Everything you get near the water here gets loaded with very fine sand particles. By the time we got back the W hull was loaded with mud, sand, sticks, leaves, live little crabs,assorted lunch trash, and some dirty water. Remember I mentioned once the W is a 4 wheeler kayak, this is proof of that.

We got in some really tight spots. The W took the trip on in fine shape. Being so short that really helped in this situation. A long boat in the 12 to 15 foot range would have been impossible to get around in tight quarters. Of course I also had the advantage of being able to stand to see over things, very difficult in almost any other boat. Of course I did try out Nina’s mini kayak. Aside from being sure nobody saw me in a bright pink boat it worked well. To tell the truth though I don’t think I could have done the 12 hours in it. The riding position in the W works for long periods. It’s very hard to explain to someone without them trying it. Logic would at first say that air seat with all the padding should be far more comfortable. But that is just not the case.

Got to tell you that trip was brutal. When we got back we were both wasted. Getting home we still had all the gear to clean up but we made it. We arrived home around 7PM but it was well after 9 buy the time I was finishing up the reels. Nina got enough sun to match the color of her new boat.

With the tide driving into or out of a narrow creek the water can really get moving. Moses Creek is serpentine, twisting and winding through the marsh. In reflecting on 12 hours in the saddle the W works well.
–Jeff (more…)

The following text was copied from an article published on a kayak fishing website:

“This next statement is important. Kayaks are not boats. Let me repeat that, kayaks are not boats. There’s a lot of room in a boat so you can move around. Even a very small boat has much more room then the largest kayak…. -Let’s look at the situation. In a kayak you’re pretty much restricted to staying in the seat area. You’re going to be most comfortable here and this is where the stability is. “

(The author of this article is unknown)

Why is this passage interesting? -Because it reflects reality as perceived by all people who fish from SOT and SIK kayaks: Restricted space, limited mobility in the cockpit, clutter and eventually discomfort - although the anonymous writer refers to the seat area as being the ‘most comfortable’ for the kayak fisherman to be in, which makes sense only because there is practically no alternative in SIK and SOT kayaks…

Technically, sit-in (SIK) kayaks are boats: They are small, hollow vessels stripped down to the minimum functionality in terms of load capacity, speed and functionality.

Sit-on-top (SOT) kayaks are not vessels - they are boards, which can be completely filled with foam and contain neither passengers nor cargo. This is why it makes more sense to classify them as ‘not boats’, as the writer did.

W kayaks are boats, with all the characteristics of boats. They even offer enough internal space and stability for the passengers to change their location within the passenger compartment called ‘cockpit’.

The author of that article quoted here was probably unaware of the existence of W kayaks when he/she wrote it.

W kayaks even offer passengers to stand up while propelling the boat, and when fishing from it, and that’s a feature that not all bigger boats can offer.

What SIK, SOT and W kayaks have in common is their small size and light weight that offers their owners the possibility to cartop them and carry them along considerable distances on shore. This small size and light weight are essentially what differs fishing kayaks from fishing canoes, which are usually bigger and heavier - although some of the bigger fishing kayaks are as heavy as canoes, and may require a trailer…

The 2008 W Kayak models come equipped with one or two pairs of detachable, side flotation modules. A flotation module is a 5 ft long plastic foam ‘noodle’ with a bungee cord going through its core. The bungee hooks at its ends enable attaching the module to Nylon eyelets on top of the W hulls’ tips.

The side flotation modules are essentially recovery accessories: In case you capsized your W kayak they can help preventing it from overturning, and if your kayak is overturned they help keeping it afloat, and by that make it easier for you to turn it back.

In some cases, when your W kayak is laying on its side, the presence of a single flotation module or better - a pair of such modules under the top side of the lower hull can lead to the boat righting itself, and this is how it works:

The top part of the lower hull is prevented from sinking by the presence of the side flotation module ‘A’.

The flotation module helps keeping water from from getting in by pushing the cockpit rim above the surface.

If water gets into the lower hull through the cockpit opening it will flow to area ‘B’ and make this part of the boat heavier. By making it increasingly heavy it would make it tilt and regain its normal position - that is with the cockpit opening facing upward.

If your W Kayak doesn’t right itself in such a situation it’s easy to right it by unbalancing it.

It’s clear to see why in any case outfitting your W kayak with two pairs of such flotation modules is more effective than outfitting it with one pair.

In sum, whether you’re taking your W kayak on a paddling, camping or fishing trip, it makes sense to take preventive measures that can minimize the severeness of a capsize accident by outfitting it with side flotation modules.

Whether you’re taking with you on board fishing tackle, camping gear or other stuff - it’s always a good idea to secure this equipment by attaching it to the boat. You will find there are plenty of spots inside the cockpit that you can use to attach bungees, carabiners, hooks and rope to secure your gear.

You may ask yourself “how stable should a fishing kayak be for me to feel comfortable in?”
The answer is simple, and widely discussed on this blog, but pictures are better than words, and a movies are the best for showing such things.
So, according to us, a fishing kayak should be stable enough to enable you to fish from it standing in full confidence, and this is the basic test in flat water, as demonstrated in this 12 seconds video:

A six foot, 200 lbs guy is standing up in his W kayak, he’s jumping up and down repeatedly, and hopping from one leg to another. The W Kayak is the only fishing kayak that offers such stability, and therefore it’s the only one enabling fishing standing in full confidence as well as paddling standing with the same ease and confidence as sitting.

As the popularity of kayak fishing increases more kayak designers and manufacturers are drawn to offer their solutions to kayak fishermen. Interestingly, if one can judge from the solutions the main problem that needs addressing is the fishing kayaks’ poor stability.

Out of three recent, original monohull designs all three are explicitly designed to be stabler than regular fishing kayaks, and two out of the three represent experiments in combining canoe features into the kayak design - for the purpose of increasing overall stability.

The two canoe-like or canoe hybrids are different by the fact that one is a SOT and the other a SIK. Both are very wide, and are offered as solutions for flat water fishing. This could mean that either their manufacturers estimate the offshore kayak fishing market to be too small to be worth addressing, or their boats not to perform well enough in the surf. This brings up again the question of seaworthiness, and whether these designs are indeed stable, comfortable and and safe enough to be used for standup fishing.

The third new fishing kayak design is a monohull as well, but it departs from the conventional approach of trying to increase stability by making the hull wider. This design offers a mechanism enabling splitting the rear part of the kayak in two and pulling the ends sideways, thus creating a stabler platform for the fishermen to fish from. The obvious problem with this design is that once the fishing configuration is deployed the ‘kayak’ becomes nearly stationary since paddling it does not meet any standard of efficiency. This fishing kayak is not offered for offshore fishing either, which again implies that its manufacturers may have some concerns about its possible performance in the ocean.

In this context it is interesting to see that another manufacturer of fishing kayaks now offers outriggers to accompany their kayaks, which is yet another fact that shows stability to be a problem at the core of the kayak fishing concept.

Overall, the appearance of new designs and solutions that address the stability problem is a sign showing that some kayak designers and manufacturers are attentive to the real problems that kayak fisherman face. Whether any of the solutions offered are viable in the long run remains to be seen.

This video has been embedded in other kayak fishing blogs, so I thought it would be appropriate to have it in Wavewalk Kayaks’ blog as well.

It’s eclectic and fun to watch:

Yesterday I had a long conversation with a man who has built and designed fifteen small boats in recent years, including kayaks. He’s an avid fisherman too, and we naturally started talking about kayak fishing.
When the conversation got into details it became clear that although kayak fishing has grown tremendously in recent years the number of people who fish from kayaks is still very small in comparison to the number of people who fish from motorboats.

We easily agreed that sit-in kayaks, and recently SOT kayaks don’t provide a comfortable enough platform for fishing, and outriggers were an invitation for your fishing lines to get caught in them.

He found a funny way to summarize the situation, saying: -”Kayak fishing is a great idea with the wrong boat.”

Needless to say that we found it easy to agree that the W is the kind of boat that can take kayak fishing to the next level.

Yoav

People sometime ask whether the W kayak offered a good solution for disabled people and people with severe problems in their legs who would like to go paddling and kayak fishing.

The answer is that the W Kayak is capable of offering unsurpassed stability due to the fact that it enables paddlers and fishermen to use the full potential of their legs for balancing.
If a paddler or fisherman has a problem that prevents them from walking it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to use their legs for balancing their W kayaks, not only in the standing position but in all other positions as well.
As its product info page states, the W may not even fit people with serious knee problems - for the same reason.

On the other hand, people who suffer from back problems that prevent them from using ordinary kayaks may find the W kayak easy to get into and out from, and they are likely to appreciate the comfort offered by its 14.5″ high saddle.