Kayak Koz

I've made an effort to cut down how much I load on my kayak for each outing. I used to bring the kitchen sink with me. Now I bring 3 Planos with baits, one Plano Edge for terminal tackle, and a few bags of soft plastic trailers. One Plano has some slots filled with a few Keitechs, Rage Swimmers, Senkos, and trick worms. But what I tend to fish are: 1. Underspin with a Keitech or Rage Swimmer. There's always one tied on. 2. Spook 3. Buzzbait 4. Spinnerbait I'll brink crankbaits, lipless cranks, a popper, a Whopper Plopper, Chatterbaits, a jig or two, a jointed swimbait, a frog, a stick bait, a spoon, and a few more one off baits. With my old pedal kayak I became a more impatient angler using more moving baits because I was always pedaling and drifting. With that, I'd beat the banks more than deep water fish and wasn't picking apart structure. That's why I'm excited about my new Old Town Autopilot with the spot lock. It will be much easier for me to be patient and pick apart structure and fish humps and ledges. And with that, I'll be fishing a lot more soft plastics and taking my time to work the bait.

I love fishing out of my kayak, but the obvious drawbacks are range and time to travel. In a bass boat you can cover a lot of water and easily jump from spot to spot on a big lake. I recently bought an Old Town Autopilot, so that cuts some time off my time to travel from spot to spot, not to mention that I'm not worn out when I get to a fishing spot. And now that I can cover more water, the other week I upgraded the maps for my Helix 7 DI SI from the base maps to Lakemaster and because it was on sale I bought the premium version with Smartstrike. In case you don't know, with Smartstrike you pick your lake, your target species, and then variables like time of year, time of day, cloud cover, and wind conditions and the software will parse that data and highlight likely locations on the map for your target species. Today I gave it a try. The weather was warm for winter (60's), windy and cloudy and a front bringing rain was moving in. I loaded up Smartstrike and it showed target areas with the closes being about 1/2 mile from my house where I launch. When I arrived at the first spot my electronics lit up like a Christmas tree with bait fish and bigger fish. I set my alarm to the middle setting for fish size and it kept chirping at me with single fish and schooling fish. The wind was pretty strong up and changing directions, so spot lock kept me moving as it tried to keep me headed into the wind. I fished an A-rig for about 10 minutes but caught nothing. With the weather bearing down on me, my goal was to hit other Smartstrike locations to see if they were holding fish. I would also see what popped up as I ran from spot to spot. In the end, 4 of the 6 Smartstrike location were holding fish. And while I saw bait in between my nav points, I never saw more than a single fish while motoring. I didn't do any additional fishing during this time because I could see the rain coming off in the distance. Of course, it was a limited run of less than two hours on a single winter day, so the results are anecdotal at this point. It will take a lot more trips under different weather conditions in different seasons and I'll actually have to catch fish to draw any conclusions as to how well it works. But my initial impression is a good one. For those of you have boated for years you may not think this investment is worth it. You may be confident with your experience and map reading capabilities. But as someone who has bank fished 95% of their life on ponds and lagoons, it will help me get better with reading maps on bigger lakes. And as a kayak angler I can use this before I fish and then narrow down which ramp to launch from so I'm closer to prime locations. I'm also thinking of entering a few BASS and / or Hobie kayak tournaments next year and this may come in handy on lakes I have never fished before. I made it back to my dock just as the skies opened up, so I'm glad I didn't stay out there. If I have time I'll give it a try again tomorrow and hopefully spend some time actually fishing.

The dog I have now had been given up twice for adoption and we could tell right away he had been mistreated and was wary of us. That was 11 years ago and what I have now is a "Velcro dog." If I go to the living room he follows me there. If I go to my office he heads to my office. But now what he really loves is going outside and sitting on the dock. He's perfectly content to sit by me while I fish and he never complains when I take just one more cast. When he sees me load up my kayak he'll sit beside it and stare, so the other week I bought him a life jacket and when the water warms up in the spring I'll bring him out with me. My Sportsman Autopilot has a ton of room so I'll set up one of his dog beds and see how he likes it out there.

Newport Vessels Trolling Motor Smart Battery Box https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AE2TG7G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

I hate FFS so much I'm considering adding it to my kayak next spring 😀 I have a love / hate relationship with FFS. I think it can be a great tool if you're the one driving the boat. But when I fished MLF as a co-angler on spotted bass lakes this year I HATED it. The boater would pull up bow first to a brush pile, take two or three casts, then we'd be on the go to another brush pile. All. Day. Long. Meanwhile, I'm getting one or two casts into the unknown and don't have time to work any slower presentations like Carolina rigs. So next year if and when I fish thee events it will be in LMB lakes only and I'll probably do a tournament or two in Florida instead of the spot lakes in GA and SC.

61* (Old guys like me will understand this)

What he said. You need to take into account the construction of your kayak and the shearing forces generated by a motor on the bow. Is there a bow mount made specifically for your make and model of kayak or will you have to come up with something on your own? I looked at putting a trolling motor on my old pedal kayak, but ultimately decided that the shearing forces would end up damaging it. So now l own an Old Town Sportsman 120 Autopilot.

Good idea. It will take me a few trips to get a comfort level with my setup. Along with the tackle storage next the seat I also like the dry storage on the other side of the seat. I used to keep my phone in a dry bag but now I don’t have to do that. Cup holders on a kayak are also new for me. The deck storage on the stern is also HUGE so it will be easy to stow both a cooler and a crate back there and have room to spare. The trade off to all of this is the weight. I definitely need to start working out again to make it easier to move around.

Between work, cold weather, and rain I had not had a chance to try out my new kayak. There was a break in the weather for a few hours yesterday and I did get the electronics mounted. Today was rainy and cloudy for a while, but as soon as the rain stopped I decided to take a spin. After dragging it my dock and seawall, my first thought was that while I can get this heavy beast over the seawall and into the water, how the heck am I going to get it up the 2 1/2 feet over the seawall and out of the water? I thought about trailering over to a nearby ramp, but I had not taken the time do take any measurements to properly adjust the bunkie boards. Even unloaded, this thing is heavy and hard to trailer from dry land. I need to make some adjustments and I may end up buying a winch. Anyway, the safest way to do this was to have both the motor and the battery on the dock, get it in the water, then put it all together. Since the battery box is under the seat, it would also be a good test for how easy it is to stand in the kayak. Moving to the bow to seat the motor I quickly realized that I'm going to need some scupper plugs. I never needed them in my Seastream pedal drive. Anyway, I got things mounted and setup, then paired the trolling motor to the handheld iPilot, set up the steering pedals, dropped the rudder, and I was on my way. The rudder on this thing is solid, and I love the way that it deploys and stows. I had set the seat to the raised position, and that's a lot different than sitting at water level in my old kayak. But for me it's a much better fishing position. I set off across the cove to a secondary point that is 1/4 away. I didn't run wide open, setting a max speed of 6 (out of 10) and steered with both the iPilot unit and the foot pedals. I have to say, I love the foot pedals. The beefy rudder makes even the smallest inputs responsive. The rudder pedals will be my main method of steering, but if I ever need to make a tighter turn I can use the iPilot remote. What was weird to me was sitting there doing almost nothing. Obviously, in my pedal drive I was pedaling away and constantly bumping the rudder control to maintain course. In the Old Town I feel like a passenger on a Sunday ride. Once I got to my spot I engaged the spot lock and even though it was breezy and I was in open water it did a good job of keeping me in place. Afterwards, I did see the unit has different spot lock options I I will experiment with those. Next, I navigated to a narrower creek channel where the water is shallow and there are a lot of submerged, fallen trees. This was good practice for navigating while fishing and everything handled as expected. The kayak has 4 rod holder, two rear facing behind the seat and two forward facing up front. The forward facing are great when you have to change baits or unbutton a fish (not that I had to do that today). One thing that I noticed is that my side imaging was clearer and provided more detail than my pedal drive. In my old kayak, the transducer was on the side of the boat using a YakAttack Switchblade, but now it's mounted firmly under the bow of my Old Town. I think that with the side mount there may have been some vibration of the mounting arm and possibly cavitation from the prop that interfered with imaging. That being said, I don't like that the head unit on my new kayak is so far forward, even at the closest rail point to the seat. On my old kayak it was right against the seat and much easier for me to read. My 7" unit seems much smaller sitting so far away from me. Weather was moving in, so I was only out there for just over an hour. I didn't catch anything and I didn't see much on electronics except what was probably a school of crappie as I was heading in for the day. When I got to my dock I put the motor, battery, and rods on my dock and after that it wasn't too bad hoisting it over the seawall. One thing of note - I did not bring my crate today. One of the may things I like about this kayak is there is a spot right next to the seat where I can fit 4 Plano boxes, so I didn't bother with the added weight of the crate. My first impressions of this kayak are great. I loved every minute of my Seastream Angler PD, but the quality and the features of the Old Town are far superior to my old kayak. My only real worries are the weight when trying to move it around and get it on the trailer. I suppose that when the weather gets warmer I can just back the trailer into the water at a ramp, but that doesn't make it easier trying to fish from home. I may come up with some sort of DIY hoist and sling system next spring.

On my kayak I started out with a Lowrance Hook2 5" with the tripleshot transducer (down scan and side scan). It worked great, but ultimately I found the screen to be too small, especially trying to read the side scan. Using split screen or multiple windows made the unit even harder to read. So then I upgraded to a Helix 7 with downscan and side imaging and it's a HUGE improvement. I know some folks mentioned that they don't see the need for side scan, but I disagree. Unless you have a huge screen, side scan isn't all that great for finding fish. But what it is great for is finding structure, especially when you are fishing 10-30 feet deep. Now that I upgraded my kayak to an Old Town Autopilot I'm thinking of buying a 9" to use with live targeting. If I had to do it all over again, I would have bought the 9" unit in the first place even though it would have been a pain to mount on my old pedal drive kayak. Whatever you do, before you buy any unit run through the mounting options for both the head unit and the transducer. I used the YakAttack Switchblade over the rail transducer arm and the YakAttack Cellblok. Consider weight and placement, especially if everything is going on the rail. The Switchblade and head unit were all mounted to the Cellblok and sat on the rail. While that worked well, I now prefer to have the transducer mounted underneath the kayak and the battery stowed. It's easier to fish without a ton of stuff on the rail. Lastly, try and think of what you might want a year or two from now. You may not want detailed maps now, but consider you might want them later and make sure your unit can do that. Or maybe you want a trolling motor down the road. You might want that integrated with your unit.

Probably a bowfin. Gators don't let go.

Honestly, you can't go wrong with either. I have just about every variety of Curado and I like them all. I've been looking at adding a Tatula or two to my arsenal, but other purchases got in the way on Black Friday. You can't make a bad choice here.

When I first joined BR it seemed like there were PB posts just about every week. But for the last year or so I have not seen that many at all. Am I missing something? Has the ecosystem changed? We still have a lot of posts here, so I don’t think it’s a lack of website traffic.

The good news - my Old Town arrived today. The bad news - I recently moved and I can't find my Humminbird box with all of the spare parts - including the transducer mounting bracket. I found all of my old Lowrance stuff, but not the Humminbird. ON my old kayak I used the YakAttack Switchblade so my transducer was over the rail. I guess I'll have to do that until I can get to BPS and pick one up. That will be faster than ordering it for delivery. It's also pretty cold out today so I'm not going to test it out just yet. It's supposed to warm up this weekend, but as my luck would have it they are calling for rain and thunderstorms. But it could be worse - I could be up north with iced over lakes!

Good luck with that. The other day I posted here on BR lamenting the urge to buy a new reel on Black Friday. I didn't. I did, however, end buying an Old Town Sportsman 120 Autopilot. So again, good luck with that. And enjoy your new boat 🤣

Ding! Ding! Ding! But you didn't hear that from me.

While that may be true of ChatGTP and the other AI we see with MSN, Google, etc. there is a lot more going on that I know of at another company that is developing true neural networks. I have been told by someone who works at this company that what is developing there is downright scary.

Good advice. I'm old and no longer a hot rodder 😀 Earlier this year I traded in my sports car for a Bronco. I had a habit of pushing my car to the limits every now and then on country roads or on track days. But I noticed my reaction times slowing down and missing braking points and apexes and I quit that cold turkey. This is also one of the reasons why I decided to upgrade my kayak rather than buy a boat. I've lost my edge -or gained some sanity.

Did you see that Sports Illustrated was busted for using AI generated content under the guise of fake writers and AI generated headshots? I remember decades ago when SI was a must have publication for any sports (or bathing suit) enthusiast. Its amazing how far they have fallen.

Lots of great information in this thread. Thanks to everyone. Even on my pedal dive, I always strap a full sized paddle to the kayak just in case I have a break down. It looks like I should get it within the next 2 days as the carrier says it's only a few hours away. It looks like it's coming in an 18 wheeler which is going to be interesting because there's no way the truck will be able to get down my tree canopy covered dirt road driveway. So I'll have to hitch up my trailer and meet the driver somewhere nearby. It's also supposed to be cold this week and when it gets warm this weekend it's going to rain. With that, I probably won't be wiring the electronics this week. Instead, I'll just keep the transducer on my Yak Attack Switchblade and go over the rail for the first trip or two. Unfortunately, I don't have a garage at my house and the steel shed doesn't have power run to it. Anyway, I'm getting excited about this. I can't wait to try it out even if I have to go fish in the rain.

$800 off? That's a no brainer! The other day I ordered the Lakemaster which also includes Smartstrike. You can also order a less expensive version of Lakemaster without Smartstrike, but I figured I would go all in. I used to look at the Navionics maps before I set out, but I think having them onboard is going to make a big difference since the standard lake maps did not provide enough detail. I'm hoping it arrives by the end of the week since my new Old Town Autopilot is also due at the end of the week.

Thanks for all of the info. The lake that I live on is 15k acres, but there are also a ton of boat ramps that I can launch from. I'm glad I bought a trailer earlier in teh year. If the battery box it comes with doesn't have a voltage meter, I'll swap it out with another one that I already have that includes a voltage meter and a built in USB port. Also, with two batteries boxes I could get a second 100 battery and connect them in parallel to increase battery capacity. I was going to fish a few tournaments next year, so that might be the best option for that. I'll also make sure that I buy a weedless wedge prop before the spring season starts. How do you like the heading puck? Do you use it a lot? I may pick your brain on the mega live setup at a later date. Thanks again!

I had looked at those, but they sit up above the rail and the way they are designed I will see both lights in front of me from my seat and that will probably disturb my night vision. That's why I prefer the port and starboard lights to be below the rail.

I pulled the trigger and bought an Old Town Autopilot 120 yesterday and it will be here within the next week or so. In the meantime I'm planning out how I want to set this up and deciding what other equipment I will need. I already have a 100ah lithium ion battery that I will be using to power the trolling motor. For those of you running that battery size, does that last you all day? What kind of total range do you have running that? Are you running wide open between spots or taking your time? Do you ever feel the need to add a second 100ah battery to extend your range and time on the water? At times I'll be running 5-7 miles away from where I launch at my house. Is that pushing it? ON my current pedal drive I use a 10ah LIPO to power my 7" Humminbird Helix with down imaging and side imaging. I've never had a problem running out of juice fishing all day. My thought is I would also connect my navigation lights to this battery as well. I could just run them off the main battery, but I'm thinking that I want every last bit of juice that I can get out of the main battery for the trolling motor. I may also add some deck lighting so I can see what I'm doing when I change baits or need to unbutton a fish. With that, I was looking at the Yak Power YP-RP5R (I don't need the more advanced bluetooth option) switching system to go along with the Yak Power navigation lights. The idea is that I could use the switching unit to power up my Humminbird and the lights as needed. If the draw ends up being too much I could upgrade to a 20ah LIPO. Does anyone have experience with the Yak Power gear? I've seen mixed reviews on their hardware. Somewhere down the road I might add FFS and a Power Pole, and at that time I'd need a major upgrade on the second battery but I'll worry about that later. I'd be interested in hearing how other Autopilot owners have set up their electronics and lighting systems. Thanks.

I did not own a kayak when I lived there, and many places don't allow personal watercraft in the lagoons. I know you can use personal watercraft in the 12 miles or so of interconnected lagoons in Palmetto Dunes and I never heard of any gator incidents in those brackish waters. However, whether it's by car or by bike your best bet is to bank fish and pond hop. Use Google Earth or Google Maps satellite view to see where you can gain access to lagoons. Of course, homeowner lots and golf courses are a no go. But, for example, my father lived in Sun City Hilton Head and there were over 200 lagoons (yes, 200!) where I had bank access to fish. I would fish one lagoon for a while and if I had no luck I'd simply bike or drive to the next one. Eventually I'd find one where the bass or crappie were biting. And whatever you do, don't ignore the small lagoons. Lagoon groupings are interconnected through the stormwater system. The idea is that when there are heavy rains, the water is dispersed through multiple lagoons to reduce the chance of flooding. My father lived n a 1/3 acre lagoon and I pulled multiple 4 and 5 pounders and even a 6 pounder out of there. On some days it seemed like there were no fish in there, but on others the bass navigated their way from the big lagoon across the street.