There are a million kayak fishing modifications floating around. But it would take an equal amount of hours of first-hand experience, not to mention boats, to sort the ingenious from awful ideas. Luckily for us, Daren Wendell of the YouTube channel Wendell Fishing has tried his fair number, and is more than willing to share five of the biggest fishing kayak modification mistakes he’s made as of late so you can avoid the same mistakes.
5 Modification Mistakes For Fishing Kayaks
3-D Printed Seat Risers
“I loved it for a couple years, then recently ran into a problem,” shares Wendell. “I developed a crack [in the kayak] at the edge of my 3-D printed seat risers. “I’m not sure if it was because of the seat risers putting pressure in a place where it wasn’t designed.”
LED Lights Inside Kayak
“I ran green LED lights on the outside of my kayak and I love those. The mistake was I also ran LED lights on the inside of my kayak. I was thinking, ‘I want to be able to see at night.’ The problem with that is it was blinding. When you’re out there in the middle of the night or early in the morning and you flick those lights on, I couldn’t see anything.”
Rudder Extension
“Mine just broke and let me tell you why. The reason I put on a rudder extension was to get the kayak to turn faster. With the extra rudder extension, you’re putting a lot more torque on that rudder control and it wasn’t made or designed for that.”
Connecting Electronics To Any Old 12-Volt Battery
“I’m pretty handy and one of those guys who says anything can be learned. Although it is possible connecting your fish finder to a battery by creating a connection, soldering them together, and kind of clipping them to your 12-volt battery, it actually made a complete mess in my hatch and, probably because I didn’t cover them with shrink tubing, ended up corroding.”
Gorilla Tape Keel Guard
“I had the Gorilla Tape, I bought it and my kayak was turned over. Then I said, ‘this is dumb.’ The moment I hit a rock or put it on a cheese grater of a boat ramp this thing is going to rip off and I’m just going to have all this stickiness that I’m going to have to remove from my kayak. What I ended up doing was getting back on the computer and coming up with the best DIY keel guard.
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