I have to agree Visibility on the water is a must -- boating guys have enough problems seeing us at the best of times - make that chore as easy as possiblecroe04 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:48 pmAlso worth considering visibility, I deliberately bought a bright yellow yak so that I can be seen easily. I wouldn't go buying blue/deep green/black yaks because its harder for people to spot you on the water. Weight is also a thing to consider, yaks that weigh 30kgs+ are not only going to suck to transport but will be slow, and make it harder for you to get places quick when you need to.
A lot of these cheapo kayaks come with a gimmicky 'stadium seat', which is just mimicking a hobie's seat. All this does is cause the yak to be more unstable, consequentally making it wider, which makes it heaveir and slower. Not something you want.
This became a bit of a buyer beware when coming to buying a kayak, but if you wanna look into some more advice on what models to pick based on specific factors, you should read this thread - http://www.fishing-victoria.com/viewto ... ilit=kayak
I posted it a while back while I was looking for a yak and heaps of helpful advice was posted that will probably help your decision too.
cheers.
I still don't get the camo colours or dull colours - bright yellow - white - orange or anything that stands out on the water is the go and fish don't care what colour your kayak is
Weight does make a difference just leaving all the fishing gear off the kayak and paddling it you feel the difference in drag
and thats on a well designed kayak - most cheapies are a poor design to start with
it takes a fair amount of playing around with design to get the hull drag down and even small amounts of extra weight changes the drag quite a bit
When designing this fast sea kayak it was surprising the difference a few kg mean to drag figures
before the race that I built it for I even dieted to reduce my weight and this kayak at 575 meters long weighed 18 kg ( still a bit heavy I would do better next time )
and seats - yes lift the centre of gravity what a great idea ( not ) this makes a kayak less stable both primary and secondary so to over come this lets just make the kayak wider and worse to paddle
wide kayaks have more drag - more windage ( harder to paddle in a wind ) and some thing most dont think of it makes it harder to get a good paddle stroke
this all makes the paddling part of kayak fishing a lot worse