Wavewalk Kayaks

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

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!

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.

It’s always fun to watch kids paddling a W kayak, regardless of their age and where they paddle it.

The sense of confidence they get from the boat sooner or later translates into visible progress, tricks and stunts.
In this case this nine year old boy had to break his own record in jumping in the kayak. We have reasons to believe he may have been hoping to capsize the boat…
He kept jumping and managed to produce a lot of spray - relatively to his weight. Then he gave a pretty impressive performance of standup paddling, which is not surprising since kids seem to find position more ‘natural’ than paddling in the lower positions.Eventually that kid and his 12 year old brother kept fooling with their boat in new and creative ways, and ended the session by declaring -”This is fun!”



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.



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…

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:

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.