Kayaks have gotten lots of press as fishing craft over the past few years, and plenty of these wonderful little boats have been sold. No longer are they a novelty among inshore fishing boats. They no longer turn heads. On the other hand, plenty of used ones are available because their owners purchased them without realizing how best to use them. Mastering any learning curve offers ample opportunities for frustration. My experience guiding fly fishers from kayaks has made this point extremely obvious.

Where the bottom is especially soft, anglers with good "kayak legs" can cast while standing, or opt to sit while casting.

Kayaks are small, silent, hand-powered boats, originally developed by the Inuits for hunting seals. They excel at stalking shallow-water fish of all kinds. I own two canoes and a “no wave slap hull” flats skiff. None of those vessels comes close in terms of stealth.

 There are two basic classifications of kayaks—the sit-insides and the sit-on-tops. While the choice of hull type is largely a personal choice, I much prefer the sit-on-top type for fishing and maneuvering. If you choose to fish from a kayak, you’ll probably wade quite a bit. In fact, some anglers only use the kayak to get to shallow water, and then bail out exclusively. Getting on and off of a sit-on-top is much easier (and quieter) than getting in and out of the cockpit of a sit-inside.

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