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Boomstick

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Boomstick last won the day on January 23 2020

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About Boomstick

  • Birthday 01/28/1982

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    North Adams, MA
  • My PB
    Between 5-6 lbs
  • Favorite Bass
    Largemouth & Smallmouth
  • Favorite Lake or River
    Emerald Lake, Lake St Catherine or Lake Dunmore
  • Other Interests
    Playing guitar, camping and horror movies

Social Media

  • Facebook
    https://www.facebook.com/dean.swiatek

Profile Fields

  • About Me
    Kayaker

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Community Answers

  1. I haven’t bothered carrying an anchor since I got pedals. With pedals, I point myself at or away from any current and jog myself in place. Before I had a pedal kayak, I ran an anchor wizard through an anchor trolley and used it all the time.
  2. Normally it would be. I just threw it on there and didn’t even center it over the hatch on the day I took that pic.
  3. I had a 6.5’ bed in my old truck and my SS127 was too long for iy. My kids 12’ Topwater was as long as I’d put in the bed. The trailer is the way to go. I got a Rack and Roll trailer and it doubles as a hand cart.
  4. You will need a bed extender for a 12 foot kayak in a 5' bed I'm not sure what's left with spot lock. Might have to go with a nk300, but motorizing without spotlock is like driving without a steering wheel
  5. Speed is relative. If you get a powerful enough motor and a large enough battery, you’ll still get good speed. If you put the same motor on a faster kayak, you’ll get better speed. But you should be able to get something that will do 4mph for hours and at 4mph you can cover a fair amount more water then you can paddling around 2mph. I fish a lot of lakes around 700-1600 acres. In my Bigwater, I can get from one end of the lake to the other in 40 minutes or less which was maybe almost 80 minutes on a couple of the same lakes paddling as fast as I could maintain. So that really lets me get spot to spot better. Of course I still have to be smart about it
  6. All I am going to say is I once said the same thing and then decided to get pedals. Had I went with pedals off the bat, I'd have saved a ton of money when I decided to upgrade later. Pedals is the way to go personally. I don't need an anchor, so one less thing to setup at launch time and I can get cardio with pedals. The Old Town Sportsman 120 is a very good kayak. It's quite stable, one of the least rickety kayaks when standing on choppy water, and moves pretty decently. I could paddle my kids old Topwater 120 roughly 1mph faster than my old Bonafide SS127 and it didn't need the rudder to paddle straight. I watched a 5' female car top a similar sized kayak, so you should be able to do it once you figure out how to do it. I'm 43 now and a year and a half ago back problems set in, and it's hard enough getting my kayak on or off the trailer. I would recommend adding a crate (YakAttack Blackpak pro 13x16 is good and you can add at least two extra rod holders if needed) and if you go with a paddle version, I would add an anchor trolley, get a 5lb mushroom anchor (those work the most reliably in all conditions) and an anchor wizard. It adds a little to the initial cost, but it saves you from the headache of dealing with anchor line, worth every penny.
  7. I went from a SS127 to an Old Town Bigwater 132PDL, for largely the same reasons. In my case, I did not want to go with a motor, I can actually get cardio from pedaling and it gives me hands free fishing. I did not really consider the Bonafide P127 not because I had any issues or complaints about the SS127, but they donked up the execution of the P127. It's basically a Slayer Max 12.5" and didn't get the same thought out execution of the SS127 and PWR 129. At the time I bought my kayaks, the P127 was $500 more than the Sportsman 120 PDL and the Sportsman 120 will still probably win in a race. But the only feature of any potential value for me was the addition of rear tracks (which I have only used for my flag since I got my Bigwater). They tried to solve some issues by adding rod holders on the rails, however if you use the track mounts, the rod holders are no longer accessible. Additionally, those plastic edges are very sharp and I have no doubt will cut your line. I ultimately went with the Bigwater 132 PDL because it was much faster than any other sit on top pedal fishing kayak that will hold me. I will note it is a bit easier to flip, but if you know not to learn you won't have any problems and it gives warning before it goes. My first day out, I got that warning maybe a few dozen times. Once I learned not to learn or how to lean against sharp turns, I never got to that warning point. I've been out on Lake Champlain with 30+ mph wind gusts and did not feel that warning point once. I would recommend is first find out, do you want to go with a motor or pedals? If you go motorized, the SS127 is a great motorized candidate for that already and is still one of the best laid out kayaks on the market a few years later so you have a great candidate for that direction. If I go motorized, I would get a motor with spot lock, personally. I will also note that the Sportsman 106 with the pedal drive in it still weighs more than the SSS127, although without the pedal drive, the 106 or even 120 is a little bit lighter. One other thing I will note here. I haven't carried an anchor since getting pedals, but it's a bit of a learning curve to be able to jog yourself in place. Basically you want to point directly at or away from any current and pedal slowly enough to counter it and not move and you can hold a spot for 20+ minutes. I posted this in another thread, but you can see my setup here. I have since added a mount with rod holders from Navarre Kayak on top of my pedal drive, which gives me a place to put up to two rods down which is very useful but I can't find any pictures since I got that, which was at the end of the year. The front rails are from Pacific Yak Angler. Such a nice upgrade. Navarre Kayak fishing also makes some for the 106, 120 and 132, but Pacific Yak Angler makes the best rails for the 132. In order to mount the fish finder on the Bigwater mounting plates, I had to buy solid mounting plates from Navarre Kayak fishing. The stock plates wobbled a lot and I didn't trust them. I recommend getting a spare prop and sheer pins and keeping that in the kayak (I learned the hard way last summer when I dropped my prop in the water cleaning fishing line out of it). Also if you go Old Town, the first thing I recommend is getting the rudder bolt from Navarre kayak. I also got the Navarre steering handle (I went short, it's more than tall enough). Basically with the rudder bolt, your rudder will stay in position without needing the annoying screw to tighten to hold position and loosen to change it, so you can simply not need the tension screw. The rudder bolt itself is $5 or $10 with all the washers you need. I po
  8. I used to use a YakAttack net in a Zooka II rod holder flipped around (which is made to hold the net). That works pretty well. To save launch time, I ended up getting a Frabil Bear Claw per @J Francho's recommendation. It works great but on an Old Town, it sits around the hatch so it's not going anywhere unless I flip. (I had it pushed a little bit too far further over the hatch in this pic, but you get the idea).
  9. I'm honestly not 100% sure on format. It will be a physical book but I imagine a lot of images can be a page in size, so some images I got on my phone may be totally serviceable. I might just want to get a cover photo, or a full-size picture for each chapter (which is generally a lake), but that could even be half page pictures with a chapter title above it. So I might be able to rent a DSLR camera. It's not a picture book by any means, but I'd like to include some decent photos. But it's in my control how I do.
  10. Fish, lake scenery and trailheads and vistas on trails.
  11. I have an iPhone 12. The camera isn’t too bad but nowhere near the lighting of a dslr
  12. I do have a few great shots on my phone I want to use already, it's not a bad camera. I was just thinking I wanted the best quality shots possible. Maybe I'll rent a higher end camera with a waterproof lens for a day, go light on fishing gear and just focus on getting potential cover shots with that. Another perk for another camera would be I could have my kid take shots of me on my kayak from his kayak.
  13. Just water resistant, so no harm if it gets some splashes.
  14. I need to buy a water resistant camera to get some shots for my book. I'm thinking maybe a GoPro, because they fit the bill and are fairly small and there's a ton of mounts, but do the photographers in this group have any other recommendations?
  15. No worries! Eastern Massachusetts isn't that far from Maine, but I'm on the western side of the state. A lot of people travel (I went to North Carolina one year). If I do make it to New Hampshire or Maine, I would obviously include it.
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