We hear and see so much about kayaks and kayak fishing these days. Undeniably, kayaks have certain advantages- they’re small, they’re very portable, and when you’re in a solo kayak there is no compromise. You can do exactly what you want, whenever you want to do it.
Canoes seem to have been left behind in all this. This really is too bad, because canoes have some advantages, too. You can stand up sometimes, to rest your butt and get a better view of the water than if you were sitting. While a bit larger than a kayak, canoes are still very portable. And they have one huge advantage over a kayak when it comes to long trips- they have a much larger load capacity.
Another advantage of the canoe if you’re a shallow water fisherman is that you can stand and pole it. I spent quite a bit of time on the trip described below standing and poling the vessel with a ferruled two-piece 14 foot Moonlighter push pole. It works wonderfully well!
Five of us just made a 160-mile paddle along the full length of Florida’s Indian River Lagoon. Three of the participants were in canoes. Two were in kayaks. Before the trip started I wondered how the kayakers would carry all the gear they needed for a trip of that length.
It didn’t take me long to find out. They kayakers lived on freeze-dried food, ramen noodles, cookies, and cliff bars. The canoeists ate real food- apples and oranges, fresh vegetables, cookies (of course!), and cooked our real food on stoves, double burner Colemans. We shared our food with the kayakers, of course. Read more….
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