Author: boat designer

John Zoltner, an engineer and kayak fisherman from upstate New York, outfitted his W500 fishing kayak with an electric trolling motor system (Read More >)

Using his knowledge of prior art in this field, he created a remote steering system using cables. And finally, he improved upon it:

-“I’ve also been fine-tuning my trolling motor concept: I crossed the cables between the TM cross shaft and where it enters the yak. What this does is give me steering that responds directly to the direction I push the control handle. I no longer have to reverse my direction logic when I choose to turn in either direction. I also wasn’t satisfied with my TM crank pulley, so I ripped it out and now have a horizontal reel crank that works much better. .. I also want to try adding a rudder directly to the body of the trolling motor…”

This is a great example that shows how design and development processes are never final – There is always something new to learn, something new to test, and something that you don’t like  🙂
It’s possible to find many examples in this article about motorized fishing kayaks ».

To some people, Aesthetics and Design are almost synonyms, and whether this notion is true is debatable, but when boats and outdoor products are concerned, aesthetics is key. But what does it mean, really, when we say that a fishing kayak “looks good”?
This article published on the Wavewalk fishing kayaks blog tries to decode the notion of aesthetics in fishing kayaks (excerpt):

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Aesthetics and Performance in Fishing Kayak Design

What is beautiful?

According to the dictionary, we perceive something as being beautiful if it is attractive to us (e.g. a beautiful woman) or pleasant (e.g. a beautiful day), or pleasant to look at (e.g. a beautiful dress), or if it’s done or made very well (e.g. a beautiful goal in the second half), or with a lot of skill (e.g. a beautiful roast).
Beauty can be associated directly with sensory pleasure, or with indirect, social value related to monetary value, or prestige (e.g. a beautiful diamond), or with both.
In case of a product such as a kayak, the beauty we see in it is a measure of how much we appreciate its performance in terms of what’s important to us, subjectively, whether as something we’ve already experienced with this kayak, or something we believe we would experience, if we used it.

In this sense, the saying ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’ is perfectly true.

What’s important?

What’s important in a product varies according to what different people are interested in. For example, if you’re into kayak racing, you’d be interested in kayaks that are as fast as possible, and very fast kayaks would seem beautiful to you, but if you’re into kayak fishing, you’d be interested a number of things, including stability, comfort, storage, etc. offered to you by that kayak. In other words, for a kayak angler, the beauty of a kayaks depends first and foremost on its fishability,…. (read the full article about aesthetics in fishing kayaks >>)

Micronautical is a website dedicated to fishing kayak design, and as such, it covers all aspects of this field.
We intend to publish an article about Hybrid fishing kayaks, but in the meantime we recommend reading the following excerpt:

The Hybrid Fishing Kayak – Facts, Hype and Plain Nonsense

The term ‘Hybrid Kayak’ is an abbreviation of ‘Hybrid Canoe-Kayak’. It’s a type of small, typically human powered watercraft that takes from the kayak in the sense that its passengers sit in it with their legs stretched forward, and use dual blade (i.e. ‘kayak’) paddles for propulsion.
The hybrid’s canoe genes are harder to track in most cases, but all hybrid kayaks are very wide, and designed to provide more stability than narrower, traditional kayaks offer. It’s likely to assume that those who design and manufacture hybrid kayaks view the canoe as a watercraft that’s stabler than common kayaks are, and the reference to canoes is therefore an implicit reference to stability…  Read more about hybrid fishing kayaks >>

Another phenomenon in fishing kayak design is the evolution of a class of extra large fishing kayaks, in the sense that they are very wide, quite heavy, and not that easy to paddle… This is an excerpt from an article entitled “The Barge – A New Class of Fishing Kayaks”  (Read more on these large size fishing kayaks >>)

“Most people know what the term Barge means when kayaks are referred to: It’s a big, wide, long, heavy kayak that’s hard to car top, hard to carry, hard to launch, hard to paddle, and hard to beach.
A Barge is a kayak that’s slow, and doesn’t track well, hence the expression “A barge to paddle”.
Manufacturers and vendors who offer barge kayaks often claim their products are so stable that you can stand up and fish from them. Some vendors would even get some dude to perform stability tricks in front of a camera, while standing up on their barge kayak, but few people fall for this kind of advertisement, and those who do soon learn not to trust improbable advertising, and they learn it the wet way, after they fall overboard… “

This is a excerpt from an article about Rox’ motorized fishing kayak published on this site. Rox isn’t the only kayak angler who had outfitted her fishing kayak with an electric trolling motor, and recently discovered the advantages of outboard gas engines — More on rigging your fishing kayak >>

Here is the test ride, it was awesome!
I had a late start today, didn’t hit the water until 2pm. Cloudy, windy and water temps were 53.
Today was my maiden voyage in the W500 with my 1.2hp Gamefisher outboard motor.

It Was AWESOME, I had so much fun, the W500 handled like always – Stable, stable and yes Soooooooooo Stable. The motor made no difference in the balance, it was like the kayak was meant to be used with a gas outboard.
I was doing doughnuts, driving over my wakes, I felt like a Kid with a new Toy…………
I even stopped to fish a little, maybe 1/2 hour was spent on fishing.
All smallies came out of the channel in 10′ to 16′ of water. Rattle Trap was really the only lure I tried, time was short. Only 2 Smallies were picture worthy, lost a beast, and landed 6 that were cookie cutters, 13″.

These 2 Big Girls hit the RT like a freight train. They both did circles under water putting a good bend in my Med/Hvy BPS rod before coming up and jumping like crazy even with the cold water temps.

LIFE IS GOOD!!!!!!!

Rox