Wavewalk Kayaks

Jeff sent us this new movie from sunny Florida. He and Jeff Maron are scouting for fish in low tide.

Jeff paddles his W fishing kayak standing up, and as he explains, by doing so he’s able to see far enough to find a way through the maze of channels and oyster bars:

The W fishing kayak’s superior stability is not just proven - it is spectacular, and anyone who watches our demo movies is amazed by what they see.

In a nutshell, our patented stabilization technology consists of a number of unique factors working together to assure maximal stability - far more than any other fishing kayak can offer, including the widest sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks, and even fishing kayaks featuring outriggers (stabilizers).

These key stability factors are:

1. Maximum use of the kayak’s buoyancy: All the W fishing kayak’s buoyancy is located as far as possible from the kayak’s center line, where it’s the most effective in stability terms. This W kayak’s ‘catamaran’ feature gives it a powerful stability advantage. In contrast, in a monohull sit-in or SOT fishing kayak most of the buoyancy’s stabilizing capability is wasted by the fact that it’s located mainly along the kayak’s center line.
2. Maximum effective leverage: In the W fishing kayak you stand up with your feet ‘planted’ on the bottom of the hulls, that is below waterline. For example, a 200 lb W kayak fisherman stands or rides his W kayak’s saddle with his feet as low as 5.5″ below waterline. In contrast, a SOT kayak fisherman who tries to stand up on the deck of his SOT kayak has his feet at least 2 to 3 inches above waterline, with little or nothing to support and hold them in place when the kayak is tilting. This poor initial stability coupled with poor stabilization capability makes it extremely hard to stand confidently on other kayaks.
3. Maximum resistance to rolling: The W kayak features twin hulls that act as double ‘hard chines’. A chine is the area where the hull’s side meets its bottom. If a boat’s chines are rounded the boat would ‘roll’ more easily than if its chines were angular. Kayak designers would give a kayak hard chines when they try to improve its resistance to rolling, or in other words when they try to increase that kayak’s ’secondary stability’. This design principle is utilized to the maximum in the W-kayak’s twin hulls that offer twice the resistance to rolling and maximal angularity.
4. Max response time: Stabilizing yourself in a small watercraft such as a kayak is easier if you have some extra time to respond to the destabilizing event. Much of the overall instability in mono-hull sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks is caused by their poor initial (primary) stability. Those kayaks’ low effective (side) buoyancy causes them to tilt faster than stabler boats such as the W-kayak. A sudden, ultra-fast and strong change can leave you too little response time. In contrast, the superior initial stability provided by each of W-kayak hulls’ position and buoyancy makes them tilt less in terms of time and distance (depth). Therefore, each time you get destabilized in a W-kayak you benefit from some extra split seconds, as well as from a better body position, so you can react more effectively and regain control more easily.
5. Maximum ‘grip’ and safety: The W fishing kayak’s patented, 14″ high saddle adds two important things when stability is concerned, especially in the Riding position, which is the most effective paddling and fishing position in kayaks. First, the saddle gives you perfect grip through your legs, without using any straps. Second, the saddle offers you good safety in case you lose balance while standing up, because you can instantly and effortlessly ‘drop’ on it, and ‘grab’ it with your thighs and knees in the riding position. Other fishing kayaks are unsafe because they offer you no such ‘plan B’ in case you lose balance while standing up.
6. Stand up paddling capability: The W fishing kayak is designed specifically for stand up paddling and fishing, while other sit-in and SOT fishing kayaks are simply too wide, which makes them ineffective for stand up paddling due to bio-mechanical problems and poor tracking.

More about stability in fishing kayaks.

And what’s a kayak fishing blog nowadays without a movie? This movie is played in 4X slow motion in order to enable the spectator to appreciate how the kayak doesn’t tip over while a large size guy is jumping up and down and from one leg to another in it:

If you want to read more on these subjects, we recommend this article about stability in kayak design

It seems like all fishing kayak manufacturers these days claim that at least one of their fishing kayak models lets you stand up and fish from. Some of them even go as far as say ‘in confidence’.

The problem with those claims is that they aren’t true, and the sure way for you to know that is by asking yourself a basic, simple and essential question:

-”What if?”

-What if you lose your balance for any reason, just because stuff happens?

And as you probably know, stuff does happen - and in fact it’s practically unstoppable… It’s usually small stuff, like a gust of wind, a motorboat’s wake, someone calling your name which makes you turn your head, a fly, a bird, a moment when you let your thoughts wander, your kayak drifting and hitting the bottom or a submerged log while you’re focusing on your line, or just a fish… Yes, some fish can be quite strong, especially those fish you’d like to catch - certainly strong enough to make you lose your balance when they bite and start vigorously pulling on your line, and most likely not in a direction that would make it easy for you…

Any of these things can destabilize you, and sooner than later it will.  And then what? You’ll tip over and fall overboard, because that’s the only solution all those wishful-thinking stand up SIK and SOT fishing kayaks have to offer you. And when that accident happens you’ll get wet, and some of your precious gear and tackle (or all of it) would get lost, and that’s too bad. You might also catch a cold, or something else (read this article about the Wet Ride ).

And let us not forget that all those pseudo stand-up fishing kayaks are not stable enough to begin with: The very form and structure of those monohull kayaks is inherently unstable (read article about kayak stability). It’s helpful to remember that all of them were developed out of the native Inuit kayaks, which were supposed to enable performing the ‘Eskimo Roll’ - if you’re sitting inside… Not a practical option for the great majority of kayak paddlers, and not a solution for anyone attempting to fish while standing on top of a kayak. Understanding this is a matter of common sense - You don’t have to be a kayak designer to realize that a kayak that’s barely stable enough for you to feel fully at ease while fishing sitting cannot support a full size, adult fisherman standing on top of it, and still be safe.

BTW, none of these facts has ever prevented any kayak manufacturer from hyping their kayaks as being ’stand up fishing’ kayaks. People want to stand up while fishing, and they want small, portable and inexpensive boats like kayaks. Naturally, kayaks manufacturers want to satisfy this demand, at least verbally….

There is only one fishing kayak out there that has a real, dependable, tested solution: Our W-kayak.

To begin with, it’s the only watercraft out there that was invented and designed specifically for stand up paddling in all types of water: flat water, streams and surf. We have a US utility (invention) patent on it.

Each of the W kayak’s twin hulls offers sufficient lateral buoyancy to support strong and sudden shifts in load, which is what happens when you lose your balance. Your feet are planted at the bottom of the hulls, below waterline - exactly where you can tap the hulls’ buoyancy to the maximum.

The W-kayak’s 14″ high saddle is positioned between your legs, which is exactly where it would be the most helpful to you when you’ll need to lower your center of gravity both suddenly and intuitively in order to regain your balance and keep your kayak from tipping over.

Bottom line: Marketing hype won’t make you stabler if you try to fish standing from an inadequate kayak platform that’s bound to send you overboard sooner than later. Having no plan B when your plan A is too shaky is a strategy that you’re bound to regret.

You need a specially designed, real-life tested and truly dependable fishing kayak for stand up fishing, and there’s only one such kayak that can answer these requirements: the W.

And if you want to see it’s not just theory, here’s a three and a half minute demo movie you may like to watch:

“I went out yesterday with a couple of the fellows from JaxKayak.  We hit the Pellicer area around 8:45AM and had a heck of nice day despite the lack of landed fish.  Saw huge schools of redfish in some cases smaller groups of 6 to 8 fish would swim by within inches of our kayaks.  The weather was beautiful and the area magnificent with it’s scenery.  The water was like gin and in the deeper sections blue in color.  I’ve attached a couple of shots I took when we landed for a quick lunch.  That’s my friend Jeff Moran sitting in the W getting his waders off.  It was the only place to sit comfortably where he could do that.  His little [SOT fishing kayak] was not the place to try wrestling waders off, you need to sit upright for that and the W was the only place.  I spent quite a bit of time standing and paddling the W searching for reds.  It’s times like that you appreciate a kayak you really can stand in and paddle.  I was stable, balanced, and quite comfortable, something any of the sit on top boats could not be said of.

One of the fellows I fished with had a sit on top [brand name] kayak.  When we got out for lunch I noticed he was wearing rain pants on a bright sunny day.  He said he had to wear them because his seat was always wet.  Looking at his kayak, no kidding!  He had nearly 4 inches of water in the seat well that kept coming in the front scupper holes and running back to fill the seat depression.  Got to wonder what the designers were thinking.  Of course I made the comment about how dry my seat was all the time.  We even got into the discussion of comfortable seats in a kayak.  The name [brand] came up and they do indeed make a wonderful seat.  But that means you buy a boat and still have to add another nearly 200 dollars to find comfort.  I of course mentioned how the W already has the best seat in kayaking and it comes as standard equipment.  We are planning a trip Tuesday to Mosquito Lagoon, it’s always best if you can to go there during the week.

–Jeff”

This is Jeff’s new, experimental movie that shows him paddling through grass beds in shallow water - first in the riding position, and than standing up, so he can scout for fish.

Advertisers often cross the line between fact and fiction, and sometimes they cross the line between true and false.

For example, a well known kayak fishing store has recently advertised on its website that one of the brands it offers* for sale is (quote): “The only kayak to truly let you stand & fish with 100% confidence”.

By doing so that store made a number of significant mistakes:

First, they openly admitted that all the other brands they have advertised for years as being suitable for stand up fishing in fact do not offer to stand and fish with 100% confidence. This is exactly what what Wavewalk has been saying all the time.

Second, that store is misleading the public to think that particular kayak is safe, while it is far from being so since its outriggers are positioned at the stern, and therefore leave the standing kayak fisherman with no extra buoyancy at all to support him on the sides of his kayak’s middle and front parts, where he’s likely to tilt his boat when fishing. Anyone can see that.

Third, if a kayak fisherman standing on that SOT loses balance, as he’s expected to do sooner or later, he has a metal frame to hold on to, but nothing to fall down on - Assuming that fisherman is holding his fishing rod with both hands (common practice…) he’s likely to fall overboard, as he would from any other SOT or sit-in kayak. In fact, holding on to the metal frame increases leverage on the hull and makes it easier to tilt sideways and overturn.

And last but not least, that store’s statement is obviously false since the only fishing kayak that really offers fishermen to stand up and fish with 100% confidence and safety is the Wavewalk, as anyone can see by watching these movies at the bottom of the article discussing stability in kayaks.

* a sit-on-top kayak equipped with folding outriggers



Yesteday’s movie was in slow motion, to enable perceiving the paddler and the kayak’s movements.

This movie is in actual, regular speed:

Here’s another one of those spectacular (goofy?) demo movies we produce from time to time. It shows a rather special stand up paddling technique involving hopping while paddling…
Totally useless in terms of kayaking or fishing, but it’s the best workout I can imagine.

And this is the second part of the super stability demo video:

Earlier this year, Craig Masterman, a W kayak saltwater fly fisherman from Massachusetts contributed some innovative rigging ideas in his fishing kayak review. Craig recently emailed me the following report from Cape Cod:

-”The fishing has been only fair along much of Cape Cod this season.  That seems to be the consensus of many anglers I have talked to.  There are fish around, but you have to work hard for them.  I have taken the W out in Pleasant Bay twice and on the Brewster flats in Cape Cod bay once, and I caught fish on each outing with the fly rod.  The rigging for the rod and paddle worked out really well. I did add a small cleat on one end of the boat right over the W logo to tie off the anchor line as I had planned.  The first trip on Pleasant Bay found me paddling up onto a beautiful white sand shallow flat next to a deeper trough of water on a falling tide.  I was able to stand and slowly pole/paddle along the edge and sight cast to visible stripers edging onto the flat to feed.  I hooked a 26 inch fat fish on the third cast!  Just perfect!  …I love the boat and will keep you updated as I tweek the rigging over time. Craig”

Thanks Craig, we look forward to more reports, rigging ideas and pictures!

Yoav

Bevans is a kayak fisherman and paddler from Texas who contributed this new, exciting W fishing kayak review to our website.

In his review he tells about his first experience with his 2008 W fishing kayak, paddling standing up, and stand up kayak fishing adventures.

Bevans’ W fishing kayak is rigged simply and efficiently.

-Thanks Bevans!

Sometimes we tend to forget that kayak fishermen are people with additional interests in life besides fishing… Some have families, and they like to share their experience and even their boat with family members and friends.

Such is Dan, from Vermont (see Dan’s W Fishing Kayak Review).

Dan invited his daughter Emily and her friend Tunie to try his 2007 W fishing kayak, and like him they had no problem paddling standing:

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!

Ben is a fly fisherman from Pennsylvania who opted for the W kayak.

In a new review he tells about the things he’s doing with his new 2008 W kayak, and about the way he rigged it to be a perfect fly fishing boat.

Among a lot of interesting things Ben has to say about his W kayak fly fishing experience, this is what struck me the most -“I’m loving the W– after 12 hours in it in a short period my back still feels good, although I suffer from chronic back issues. After 8 hours Friday I knew when to quit, when it started getting tired.”

Anyone who’s suffered from chronic back pain could appreciate this.



-”Went out for the fourth time yesterday- getting my W outfitted for sight fishing carp with a fly rod in the flats.
I stand almost the entire time now, great line of sight on the fish, and it’s also easier to fight the fish standing.

I have a stake out pole for anchoring in shallow water, and a 3 lb dumbell for dropping anchor.

Steering is easy by dipping the paddle on the side I want to drift toward. I installed a notched foam paddle seat on each side so i can quietly set down the paddle and make no noise or slippage.

Yesterday I caught a real nice Common Carp– about 26″ and 7-8 lb. He ran me around for 15 minutes, and was released healthy after pics!

I also hooked a monster bass (thought I was throwing to a carp) but I lost him when I got too much line slack.

The W is a delight- easy to load, my back is feeling good, and I’m catching fish!

–Ben”

The logo on Ben’s hat says “Delaware River Kayak Fishing”.

Being a kayak fisherman or a regular paddler you may be interested in improving your stand up paddling skills and technique. This is a short movie that shows how paddling standing in the W kayak is done on flat water:

The video also shows some ‘warming up’ exercise: Jumping up and down in the cockpit.

This image taken from the video clearly shows the W wave created by the W Kayak bow:

When it comes to pushing the boundaries we’re always trying to come up with something new, even if it doesn’t always makes sense for daily paddling or fishing.

Our latest experiment is paddling standing in tandem, and by ‘tandem’ we mean two adults - In this case it’s a 6′, 200 lbs guy with a 5′ 6″ , 130 lbs gal.

It certainly required keeping cool, considering the water temperature was below 40 F… -A good exercise in team spirit building.

We’ll keep experimenting as both weather and water get warmer.



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.