MICRONAUTICAL BOAT DESIGN

Our answer to this question is “as much as possible – there’s no such thing as too much storage in a fishing kayak”. We believe that most experienced kayak anglers would adhere to this opinion, although it seems like some people who are affiliated with certain fishing kayak brands think there’s such a thing as “too much storage in a fishing kayak”  🙂

When a fishing kayak is concerned, the three fundamental questions pertaining to storage are:

1. How much storage space does the kayak provide?
2. How well does this storage space protect the gear stored in it?
3. How easy and convenient it is for the kayak angler to reach the stored gear?

Even the biggest and most expensive fishing kayaks don’t offer a sufficient amount of storage space for a serious, long fishing trip. This includes SOT fishing kayaks, and Hybrid fishing kayaks that are so big, heavy and clumsy that paddling or pedaling them is hard, and so is car topping them. This is why they’re called ‘barge yaks’, and they require that you outfit them with a crate.

The only fishing kayak that provides as much storage space as you’d need for a fishing trip of any length is the W500 (and the 502, of course). The storage space in this kayak is protected from the elements, and you can always access it from inside the cockpit – even when you’re out on the water.  This can’t be said about the typical storage solution that other fishing kayaks feature, which is called hatches.

Read more about storage in fishing kayaks >

 

Interestingly, most people, including most of those who fish, which count in the tens of millions in the United States alone, perceive kayak fishing to be an extreme form of fishing, and therefore the fishing kayak to be an extreme watercraft.
Of course, this is relative to fishing from shore, or from traditional, bigger boats such as canoes, dinghies and skiffs, and other motorized boats that are popular for fishing, although nearly all of them are more expensive than fishing kayaks, when both purchase price and cost of maintenance are concerned.
In fact, the ratio of kayak anglers to all anglers is about 1:1,000 in the U.S., a figure that tells a lot.

So the question asked in this blog post’s title is not misplaced, and it should be asked more frequently, and discussed openly and thoroughly, as this “Kayak Fishing As An Extreme Sport” article does.
Excerpt from this article:
…”Kayak fishing promised a cheaper, hassle free, low maintenance, lightweight, car top form of fishing craft, and a direct, sporty experience. However, today, out of tens of millions of Americans who fish from boats, merely one in every thousand fishes from a kayak, and this is after a decade of promises that ‘kayak fishing is the fastest growing outdoors sport’, etc. The bulk of US anglers have followed neither the kayak fishing pioneers nor the fishing kayak manufacturers’ hype, and since growth in kayak fishing participation is no longer as fast as it had been several years ago, it is safe to say that the US kayak fishing market has matured. This is partly a result of decreasing enthusiasm from new participants, as well as a high dropout rate that has been typical to this sport since its early beginnings.
Yes, but…

But kayak fishing feels extremely uncomfortable only if you’re fishing from the old fashion, sit-on-top (SOT) kayaks and sit-in kayaks. In contrast, when you fish from a W kayak, you experience a level of comfort that’s equivalent to that of fishing from a regular size boat, and some W fans would argue that you feel even better…”

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 >>