Kayak fishing in fresh water

Freshwater kayak fishing is the gentler half of the sport in every respect except one, and the exception is the one that catches people out.

THE CONDITIONS ARE USUALLY EASIER. No tide, no swell, no surf, shorter fetches, and a shore that is generally reachable. That is genuinely true and it is why a lake is the right place to learn to paddle, to practise a re-entry, and to find out what a loaded kayak does when you lean.

THE HAZARDS THAT REMAIN ARE REAL AND DIFFERENT.

Cold water is worse inland, not better. Deep lakes and reservoirs stratify and stay cold near the surface well into summer, and upland water is cold all year. The same immersion physiology applies and the water is often colder than the sea alongside it.

WIND ON A LAKE IS UNDERESTIMATED because there is no swell to signal it. A long fetch down a reservoir builds a short, steep chop quickly, and the paddler is upwind of nothing — there is no shore downwind that is a safe place to be blown to on a large water, only a shore that is a long way away.

RIVERS ADD MOVING WATER AND STRAINERS. A kayak pinned against a fallen tree by current is the classic river fatality: the water goes through and the boat and the person do not. Weirs, sluices and low-head structures produce recirculating hydraulics that are extremely dangerous and do not look it. River kayaking is a discipline with its own training, and fishing from a river kayak does not exempt anybody from it.

AND THE PERMISSION QUESTION IS THE ONE THAT ACTUALLY DECIDES MOST TRIPS.

Inland, three separate permissions are involved and they are commonly assumed to be one:

• The right to be on the water at all — navigation rights, which in England and Wales exist on relatively few rivers and are contested on more; in Scotland statutory access rights are much broader; and elsewhere the picture varies by country and by water. • The right to launch — which is a property question about the bank and often a different owner from the water. • The right to FISH — which is a separate fishery right entirely, frequently owned or leased by somebody who owns neither the bank nor the navigation, and usually requiring a rod licence or permit as well.

A reservoir open to sailing may prohibit fishing. A river with a public navigation may have a private fishery along the whole of it. A lake with a day ticket may prohibit boats. None of these is unusual and all of them are routinely discovered on the bank.

FishingHQ does not hold current access, permit or navigation information for any water, and none of the above should be read as saying what applies anywhere in particular. What generalises is the structure of the question: establish who controls the water, the bank and the fishery, separately, before travelling, and expect the answer to differ between them.