nine kayak fishing mistakes i made and you should avoid starting now i've been in a kayak fishing
sport for a while now and the reality is i made some dumb mistakes the good news is you can learn
from them and probably save some cash in the process i'm gonna skip over the begging you for
the legs and sub and bell and hop right in and get this party started here's the thing stick around
to the end because the last three are specific to fishing out of your kayak mistake number nine here
we go your skin is not the only thing that could be compromised by the sun the reality is those
uv rays will destroy just about anything over time you can just ask my hot tub cover fortunately that
also means your kayak you see kayaks are made most of them from polyethylene fun fact polyethylene is
the most widely used plastic in the world and two things happen to polyethylene when exposed to uv
rays one is that the colors fade big bummer two is that the plastic actually becomes brittle this
is kind of a big deal for those who carry a lot of heavy loads on their kayak i know mine fully
loaded is around 100 pounds and so that crack that you got or maybe you saw on a social media feed
with somebody else may have less to do with the manufacturer and how they built the kayak and more
about how it was stored there's two things you can do here one is the obvious one do not store it in
the sun as you can see here i have mine up on a pulley hoist if you're interested how to do that
i made a video about it i'll throw it up in the cards just because it's not outside doesn't mean
those rays are not coming through the glass and fading the color of your awesome kayak as you can
see here i'm still making that mistake because i don't have any cardboard over here so it wouldn't
surprise me that when i take this down this little section here would be faded by the sun looks like
i need to learn from that mistake second thing you can do is actually use a protectant i highly
recommend the aerospace 303 this stuff right here the reality is it's kind of expensive but
it's worth it some of the best out there on the market so i'll throw a link in the description
below moving on number eight whether you purchased a kayak or not this mistake is probably one you
never thought of the color of your kayak when you're looking for a kayak you're looking at
the color and be like how awesome does it look the question you're not probably asking yourself
and maybe it should is how will i be visible in the water to other watercraft if you're concerned
with safety especially if you fish those heavily traffic waterways then this might be something
you want to consider but if you fish places with not a lot of both traffic but you're moderately
concerned with boat safety that i have another option for you so when you're on the water your
best colors to be seen are obviously your high vis colors is green your hive is yellow your
hive is orange like this guy right here kind of difficult not to see him your moderate colors
are going to be your reds your blues your greens and some of your worst colors are gonna be your
white kayaks might not be thinking about this but on a sunny day out in the water you're just gonna
look like a glare also one of the worst colors is camouflage because you blend in right with
the horizon you have to be a complete idiot if you were to purchase a camouflage kayak
now keep in mind when we're on the water we assume that boaters see
this but the reality is a lot of times boaters might only see this profile of your kayak so
it may be a really good idea to pay attention to the color of your kayak and if you don't have one
if you have a camouflage like this idiot here well it might be a good idea to get a flag for your yak
then yak attack makes a fantastic kayak flag so check it out and if you fish tonight it lights up
so i'll throw that link below mistake number seven all right this one's gonna be quick i purchased my
native slayer propel 10 off facebook marketplace drove two hours to pittsburgh to pick it up and i
didn't have a trailer at the time so i took every single strap i owned threw it to the top of my car
and drove home and it was the loudest ride of my life as all of these straps vibrated in the
wind well what i didn't realize was happening at the time as i was flying down the road at 70
miles per hour as that strap was vibrating and whenever that strap started touching
my kayak that's what was making a lot of the vibrations and when i came home i found that all
that friction actually melted part of my kayak was the big bummer because i just purchased it
so if you're gonna take a long trip make sure you put a piece of cardboard in between the strap and
your boat so you don't melt your kayak moving on a mistake number six this is a mistake i made i just
purchased my fishing kayak and just hop out in the water and started fishing i had no clue i didn't
know my limitations i didn't know my abilities and i definitely didn't know my safety measure
i'm not gonna go into a ton of detail here but at a high level you should at least know how to do
these things you know how to do a deep water re-entry in case you fall out of your kayak
it's not as simple as you may think should know how to identify wind speed and know
kind of what's your line i just did a video on this how to identify wednesday by deducing
how the wind affects the things around you throw those up in the car you let someone know where
you're going to be when you're out kayak fishing to be prepared for the weather actually should be
prepared for immersion should at least somewhere on your yak have a whistle or some type of small
horn make sure you have a toe line i always also keep a knife on my body you of course should
have a personal floatation device watch your hydration and much more i share these things
that the leading cause of death and kayaking is drowning and drowning a lot of times the result
of not knowing your abilities your limitations and your safety measures these are actually a bullet
point list of a video i'm putting together so if you're not sub to this channel hit that sub and
bell and you will be notified when it comes live moving on to mistake number five fishing kayaks
are expensive and since you're dropping a bunch of cash you should be able to try this
thing out before you buy it just like you would with a car so here's some things to consider
some stores won't let you try before you buy but here's the thing you don't have to buy for them
you're the one that has the cash you're the one that has leverage go somewhere else obviously
you could buy use like i said earlier i bought mine off a facebook marketplace all you have to
do is let the seller know hey would you meet me at the local pond so i can test this thing out
just make sure that you've done your research and you're ready to buy some specialty kayak stores
actually build ponds on their property so you can try these out they're not everywhere but do
your research you might have one near you here's another option if you absolutely have a kayak that
you love and it's only sold at this store and you can't find it anywhere else you might want to dig
into the return policy it might be very generous just make sure you dial in whether or not it's an
in-store credit or a full refund and last thing if you're not in a hurry a lot of these stores sell
kayaks have demo days a few times a year so head over the website and see when those are alright if
you're still with me hit that like button let me know you're tracking moving on to mistake
number four get a kill guard before it's too late and the damage is already done here's the thing i
did that with my native slayer i was so excited when i bought it i just hopped out in the water
and i kind of destroyed the front hall of it here here's the here's a video of it um so i actually
did a diy kydex keel guard for that it's working out great like most things that you think a bunch
of money into you want to keep them nice and i know that my kayak fully loaded like i said is
a hundred pounds and when you ram that into a rock it's gonna do some damage to the polyethylene hull
and since most kayaks purchased from the store don't come with a cue guard it might be a good
idea for you to get one three options for you here number one obviously you can purchase these online
they're kind of expensive though but if you do a quick google search you can find option number
two if you really want to invest into your kayak i highly recommend doing a diy keel guard using
kydex i actually did a video on how to install this and how all the things that you need to
purchase it so i'll throw that up in the cards you can do it for yourself i put mine on the middle
last season it's been holding up ever since so highly recommend that and the third option i have
is kind of exploratory i found this kayak it's aruba 10 in a river about a year and a half ago
and i i turned into the police and they said if no one comes for it it's yours well that was a year
and a half ago so it's mine i'm starting to mod it out a bit and i don't want to spend a lot of time
putting a diy kydex kilogram into i'm testing out how this would actually work it's gorilla tread
tape i'm going to put a video together here in the future and i'll let y'all know how this holds up
you can see here it's really rough and since i'm not in that kayak a whole lot it's more force
someone wants to come fishing with me i don't want to invest a lot of money and this thing was like
10 bucks all right we're down to the last three and like i promised these have to do with mistakes
i made fishing from my kayak well all right let's start with number three all right this one has to
do with keeping a low profile before i was a kayak fisherman i was a bank fisherman so i didn't worry
a whole lot about sound well now that you're in a kayak there's all kinds of noises coming from
your kayak that could spook those bass so keeping a low profile is key also keep in mind where those
eyes are on the large mouth bass on the top of their head so they're very aware what's going on
on top of the water i fish here in northeast ohio a lot if there's one lake that i fish and there's
a bald eagle-ness and often i see that bald eagle come down snatch a bass and take off so it's going
to benefit you to keep a low profile and this is what i mean if you have an electric motor
on your kayak you might want to turn that off and pedal into your spot so you don't spook the fish
if you have a pedal powered kayak you're going to slow this down so you're not making a lot of
noise as you enter into where you want to fish and i would imagine most you paddle your kayak
at some point so keep in mind the splash that you're making with your kayak paddle and also
anytime you bang that against your boat it's not helping your fishing game man mistake number two
is keep your distance and i'm not talking about from other kayak fishermen talking about keep your
distance away from those bass guys and gals it's gonna be much easier for you to catch that bastard
track in if they don't know you're there there's a tendency to try to get as close as you possibly
can to that bass but actually that works against you you don't have to shake hands with that thing
you just gotta be able to make out the outline of the fish and the further away that you are
the higher the chances are you're gonna get a bite quality optics will help you here but also keep in
mind how you have your kayak position if possible do your best to position your kayak and your back
to the sun and mistake number one i made this mistake all the time a lot of you guys are deadly
with where you can put that lure i mean you can put it just about anywhere you want and this comes
into play a lot when it comes to bed fishing you see a fish and you just kind of land that
lure right on its head and what happens actually those fish scatter i used to make that mistake
all the time until i learned to overcast my lure instead of landing it and dropping a bomb right in
the middle of the bed or right where that fish was overcast your lure a few feet and then dance that
right back through where that fish is sitting to get that reaction bite if you like these tips
you're gonna love this video 11 things i wish i knew before i started kayak fishing right there