A kayak has no skeg, no rudder and no motor, which means every meter of water you cover costs you paddle strokes. Wind and current turn a 20-minute trip into a 40-minute grind, and holding a position over a weed bed or a drop-off is a constant balancing act. A purpose-built kayak trolling motor solves … Read more
Fishing from the bank hides almost everything that matters. The drop-off you can see from the treeline never looks like a drop-off, the weed bed reads as flat blue, and the channel that holds fish every evening is invisible until you are standing knee-deep in it. A portable fish finder puts depth, bottom contour, temperature … Read more
A portable ice fishing fish finder has one job a boat unit never does: everything you own fits in a sled, survives a day in deep cold, and works with gloves on while you stand over a drilled hole. Most roundups score screen size, frequency and depth range, then leave you to guess whether you … Read more
The best side imaging fish finders for bass fishing are the Garmin Striker 7SV, the Lowrance Elite FS and the Garmin ECHOMAP UHD2 93sv, and the reason is simple: side scan is how you find bass that are holding tight to structure instead of swimming in open water. Every unit below runs a dedicated side … Read more
Disclosure: We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through the links on this page. That never changes what we recommend. The Garmin STRIKER 4 is the best overall pick for most anglers shopping in the best fish finders under 500 dollars category, and it is not close. Nine thousand-plus owners have rated it, … Read more
Yes, a fish finder works well on a kayak, and a kayak is arguably the craft that gains the most from one. From a seat a few inches above the water you cannot see the drop-off two paddles away, the channel edge under the surface film, or the brush pile you drifted past last season. … Read more
The best kayak anchor for shallow water is a light folding grapnel of 1.5 to 3.5 pounds, paired with a line long enough to give you real scope. In under six feet of water, holding power is not the hard part. Deploy speed, quiet landings, and getting the anchor back up without stirring the bottom … Read more
Most kayak carts fail for the same reason: the wheels are too narrow. Push a cart with 7-inch hard plastic wheels across dry, powdery beach sand and each wheel sinks, the frame digs, and a 200-yard carry turns into a workout. The best kayak carts for sandy beaches solve that one problem with wide, low-pressure … Read more
Most paddlers who complain about their lower back after a morning on the water are not suffering from a bad back. They are suffering from a bad seat, because the thin molded plastic shell their kayak came with has no lumbar support and no height, so their spine spends two hours in a rounded C-shape … Read more
Most paddles are picked in the first five minutes of owning a kayak. Anglers spend longer, because the paddle is also a push pole, a line retriever and a launching tool. Picking wrong shows up as a blade that will not reach the water from a raised seat, or a shaft that flexes too much … Read more