Rigging a used boat to fish from

Fishing kayaks sell used for a fraction of new, and they usually sell stripped: the previous owner took the rod holders, the fish finder and the crate with them. What you have bought is a hull with some holes in it. This section is about filling that back in cheaply and without making the boat worse.

The first rule: stop drilling

Every hole in a kayak deck is a potential leak and a permanent decision. On a used boat you are usually inheriting somebody else’s holes already, so the instinct to add more should be resisted until you know how you actually fish.

Three ways to mount things without drilling, in order of preference:

• Use the gear track if the boat has one. Most fishing kayaks made in the last decade have at least one length of accessory track molded or bolted into the deck. Track-mounted holders slide on and off in seconds and move between boats.
• Use the crate. A milk crate behind the seat with rod tubes zip-tied to it holds rods, tackle and a dry bag, and it leaves the hull untouched. It is also the cheapest rigging on this site by a wide margin. See the crate setup.
• Reuse existing holes. Scotty publishes the bolt pattern for its mounts — 1 5/16" by 3 3/16" for the 230 Powerlock — so you can check whether a new holder lands on the previous owner’s holes before you commit to new ones.

Rod holders: the locking ring is the whole product

Open-style rod holders come in two kinds: the ones with a front locking ring and the ones that launch your rod into the lake. The Scotty 230 Powerlock has one, publishes a 1.95-inch interior diameter that takes essentially any reel, and rotates a full 360 degrees horizontally. Its mount is in the box, which is worth checking on any Scotty product because several are sold as the holder alone.

The alternative philosophy is the RAM ball-and-socket system, where one knob repositions the entire assembly. It costs more, because you buy a holder, an arm and a base, and it is worth it if you fish actively from the seat and want to aim the rod rather than store it.

A flush-mount holder set into the deck behind you is the cheapest option and the one that requires the biggest hole. If you are keeping the boat for a decade, fine. If you might sell it in two years, use the crate.

Anchoring: buy rope length, not anchor weight

Almost every kayak anchor sold is a 1.5 to 3.5 pound folding grapnel, and at that end of the market the anchors are more similar than different. What varies, and what actually decides whether the kit works for you, is how much rope is in the box.

The reason is scope. An anchor holds by lying flat and dragging its flukes into the bottom, and it can only do that if the rope runs out at a shallow angle. Rope equal to the water depth pulls the anchor straight up and it skips. You want several times the depth. So the Gradient Fitness kit’s published 25 feet of rope is comfortable in six feet of water and useless in fifteen, regardless of how good the anchor is.

Buy the kit that includes a buoy. When a grapnel wedges under a rock — and it will — a buoy lets you clip off, float the line, drift away, and come back to retrieve it from a different angle. Without one, your options are snapping the line or pulling yourself down to the anchor, and one of those is how kayaks get swamped. The Gradient kit publishes a PVC float and a stainless snap hook as standard.

Anchors are also not the only answer. In shallow water a stakeout pole is faster, quieter and cannot snag; in wind, a drift sock slows you without stopping you. We put the three side by side on anchor versus pole versus drift sock.

What order to buy in

If you are starting from a stripped hull, this order wastes the least money: crate first, because it holds everything and costs almost nothing. Then a rod holder, because hands-free paddling is the point. Then anchoring, once you know whether you fish moving water or still. A fish finder last, or never — it is the most expensive item in kayak fishing and the least necessary on water you know.

The priced version of all of this is on the kayak fishing accessories checklist.

Anchoring safely, and the electronics question

Never anchor a kayak from the side in current. Held at the side, the boat turns broadside, the current pushes the upstream gunwale down, water comes over it, and the water inside lowers that gunwale further. An anchor trolley moves the pull point to the bow or the stern so the boat lines up with the flow instead — what a kit contains, and whether the holes are justified, is on the anchor trolley guide.

On fish finders, the screen is the cheap part. A kayak has no battery, no transom for a transducer and nowhere flat to bolt a bracket, and those three routinely cost as much again as the unit. That is also why a castable sonar — nothing to install, nothing to undo before you sell the boat — is a serious answer rather than a toy. The costs are laid out on the budget fish finder roundup.

The two boxes in the tankwell

A cooler and a tackle box are the two things most likely to ride in the well, and both are bought wrong in the same way: on capacity rather than on whether they fit and whether they seal. A cooler that sits on top of the tankwell instead of in it raises twenty pounds of ice a foot higher than the boat was designed for, and a tackle box that lets water in is a box of rust by the following weekend. Fit and sealing, in that order, on the best kayak coolers and the best kayak tackle boxes.

Three more that come up once the boat is rigged. In water shallow enough to touch bottom, a stakeout pole beats an anchor outright — published lengths and weights are on the stakeout pole roundup. When the wind is doing the work, a drift sock sized for a kayak rather than a bass boat is the tool, on the drift sock roundup. And if you added a fish finder, the battery, box and fuse that make it safe are on the fish finder battery guide. The two Garmin units most kayak anglers choose between get a closer look on the STRIKER 4 review and the STRIKER Cast review.