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Kayak fishing: what to learn, and in what order

A craft discipline in which the fishing is the easy part. It must be modelled across fresh water and salt, and 'do not launch' must be reachable early.

16 steps, 41 pages, and no account to make. Every step below links to pages that already exist on FishingHQ — this is the ORDER to read them in, which is the thing nobody tells you when you start. 5 of the steps are marked do not skip. They are the ones where getting it wrong is not a wasted afternoon.

Nothing here records what you have read, and nothing asks you to sign in. Come back to this page and pick up wherever you like.

The steps

  1. Step 1 of 16

    What changes at sea level

    • Kayak fishing — start here

      A platform rather than a technique: quiet, shallow-draught access to water no other craft reaches, bought at the price of exposure, and a discipline where the decision not to launch is part of the skill.

    • Where a kayak changes the fishing

      A kayak changes access, silence and positioning. It does not change what a fish eats, and the difference between those two statements is the whole of this subject.

    • Kayak fishing: cold water, offshore wind and getting back on

      Three things account for most kayak-fishing incidents — the water temperature, the direction of the wind, and whether the paddler has ever practised getting back on. None of them is equipment.

  2. Step 2 of 16

    Choosing and rigging a fishing kayak

    • Sit-on-top and why the hull is a safety decision — start here

      The difference between a sit-on-top and a sit-inside is not comfort or preference. One can be climbed back onto in deep water and the other generally cannot, and that is the whole argument.

    • Kayak stability, and what a hull trades away

      Stability is two different properties that trade against each other, and against speed. The hull that feels safest sitting still is not always the one that behaves best when something unexpected happens.

    • Kayak seating, and why it is a safety decision

      A seat is sold as comfort and behaves as a stability setting and a fatigue setting, both of which decide what a paddler can still do at the end of a long day.

    • Rigging a fishing kayak

      Everything is either secured, leashed or expendable, because the kayak will eventually be upside down. Beyond that, the constraint that shapes kayak tackle is that nothing can be fetched.

  3. Step 3 of 16· Do not skip this one

    Buoyancy aid, leash and what is worn not stowed

    • Buoyancy aids for anglers — start here

      A buoyancy aid removes the need to swim during the minute when cold water shock makes swimming unreliable, which is the minute that decides most immersion outcomes.

    • Leashes on a fishing kayak

      Every leash prevents a loss and creates an entanglement, which makes them the clearest safety trade-off in the discipline and one that has to be decided deliberately rather than by default.

  4. Step 4 of 16· Do not skip this one

    Self-rescue and remounting

    • Kayak fishing: cold water, offshore wind and getting back on — start here

      Three things account for most kayak-fishing incidents — the water temperature, the direction of the wind, and whether the paddler has ever practised getting back on. None of them is equipment.

    • Towing and assisting another kayak

      Self-rescue is the half of the problem a paddler can practise alone. The other half arrives when somebody else is the one in trouble, and it is the reason paddling in company is a technique rather than a preference.

  5. Step 5 of 16· Do not skip this one

    Communications and being seen

    • Being seen from a kayak — start here

      A kayak sits a hand's width above the water and is invisible on radar and nearly invisible in a chop. Everything about visibility rests on one assumption: that nobody has seen you.

    • Calling for help from a kayak

      Being seen and being able to summon are two different problems with two different sets of equipment, and a paddler in the water has already lost access to anything that was not on their body.

    • Boat traffic, and being seen from the surface

      A diver at the surface is almost invisible from a boat at any distance, and propeller strike is a recognised cause of death — which is why the float is safety equipment before it is fishing equipment.

  6. Step 6 of 16· Do not skip this one

    Wind, tide, swell and the decision not to launch

    • Kayak conditions: wind, tide, swell, and the decision not to launch — start here

      There is no wind speed that is safe and no wave height that is not. What decides a kayak day is how wind, tide, swell, temperature, daylight and your own range combine — and the most useful answer this subject has is often that today is not the day.

    • When conditions turn during a session

      Conditions deteriorate faster than divers notice, because the diver is absorbed, cold and progressively less capable of judging — which is why the decision is agreed on land before anybody has anything invested.

    • Reading the tide

      The single most important variable in sea fishing: what moves the water, when it moves fastest, and why the same mark is a different place at every hour.

  7. Step 7 of 16· Do not skip this one

    Launching and landing, including surf

    • Launching and landing a fishing kayak — start here

      The launch and the landing are where a kayak is least controllable and the angler most committed, and the landing is harder because it is done tired, loaded and with the sea behind you.

    • Surf beaches

      Open sand and shingle shores where breaking waves lift food off the bottom — featureless-looking ground that is anything but.

  8. Step 8 of 16

    Anchoring, drifting and holding position

    • Holding position: anchoring and drifting from a kayak — start here

      Anchoring a kayak in current is the most dangerous ordinary thing a kayak angler does, and the equipment that makes it survivable is a trolley and a knife rather than a better anchor.

    • At anchor or on the drift

      Anchoring fishes one position thoroughly and commits you to it; drifting covers ground and gives up precision — and the tide usually decides which is possible before preference does.

    • Drift fishing

      Letting the boat move with tide and wind while fishing, so the tackle searches ground instead of waiting on it — and the decision that determines whether a boat session works at all.

  9. Step 9 of 16

    Electronics and what they are for

    • Electronics on a fishing kayak — start here

      A wet, tipping, single-battery platform with no spare of anything. Electronics here are a rigging problem and a power problem before they are a fishing one, and the safety-critical device is the one that summons help rather than the one that finds fish.

    • Motors and electric drives on a fishing kayak

      Adding power changes three things at once: what the craft can do, what it weighs, and — in a great many places — what it legally is.

  10. Step 10 of 16

    Storage, transport and loading

    • Transporting and storing a fishing kayak — start here

      The part of kayak fishing that happens on land, damages more kayaks than the sea does, and carries a biosecurity consequence nobody associates with a boat.

    • Tackle management on a kayak

      A kayak is a small moving platform with no spare surface, and the difference between a tidy deck and a cluttered one is a difference in what happens during a capsize rather than in convenience.

  11. Step 11 of 16

    Kayak fishing in fresh water

    • Kayak fishing in fresh water — start here

      Inland, the binding question is almost never conditions — it is permission, and access to water, to launch and to fish are three separate permissions that are routinely assumed to be one.

    • Reading a river for fish

      A river is a repeating sequence of the same few features, and each one holds fish for a different reason. Learning the sequence means arriving at an unfamiliar river already knowing where to look.

  12. Step 12 of 16

    Kayak fishing at sea

    • Inshore and offshore: what actually changes — start here

      The words describe distance from shore, but everything that matters about the difference — depth, structure, water clarity, self-reliance and consequence — changes with it rather than because of it.

    • Inshore ground

      The shallow shelf water between the shore and the open sea — mixed sand, rough ground and reef where most boat fishing in the world actually happens.

    • Weather windows in sea fishing

      A weather window is a period in which conditions are workable rather than merely forecast, and reading one means understanding wind, swell, tide and their interactions rather than a single number.

  13. Step 13 of 16

    Tackle from a small craft

    • Tackle management on a kayak — start here

      A kayak is a small moving platform with no spare surface, and the difference between a tidy deck and a cluttered one is a difference in what happens during a capsize rather than in convenience.

    • Salt, corrosion and what it does to tackle

      The constraint that shapes every piece of sea tackle: salt water attacks metal continuously, and the failures it causes arrive without warning at load.

  14. Step 14 of 16

    What a kayak reaches

    • European sea bass — start here

      A fast, predatory inshore fish that hunts in broken water and surf, and one of the most closely managed recreational species in European seas.

    • Pollack

      A fast gadoid that hunts up off reefs and wrecks and takes a lure on the drop — and the sea fish most likely to convert a bait angler to lure fishing.

    • Mini species and species hunting

      The branch of shore fishing whose object is the number of species rather than the size of anything — and a form of angling a catalogue organised around target species is structurally unable to see.

  15. Step 15 of 16

    Handling fish afloat

    • Handling fish from a kayak — start here

      A kayak lands fish at water level, alone, on an unstable platform with nowhere to put anything — which is better for the fish and considerably more demanding for the angler.

    • Handling fish safely

      Teeth, spines, gill covers and venom — knowing which local species have what, before you catch one rather than afterwards.

    • Catch handling and transport

      What happens to a fish after the shot — a welfare question, a food-quality question, and, if the fish is towed, a safety question.

  16. Step 16 of 16

    Craft rules and what to verify

The other paths

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