Despite what most people believe, covering up your skin is necessary while you are ocean kayak fishing. Long sleeves, and khaki pants are a great way to protect your arms, chest, back, and legs from severe sunburn. A good fully brimmed hat, with a cloth down your neck is a great way to not only stay cool, but also protect your face and neck from sunburn as well. These are severe problems, that if you are planning for any amount of time on the big water, must be thought about before you leave the beach.

If you intend to do any fishing near islands, or other large pieces of structure, you are going to want to take the currents into consideration. At different times of the day, and different phases of the moon, the currents will move in different directions. To ensure that you remain safe, even if you have been through the spot before, keep the currents at the forefront of your thoughts, while you are padding around large pieces of structure.

Lastly, once you start hooking into fish, make sure that you are keeping your body weight centered, especially if you are not using any sort of outrigger setup, to keep the boat steady. If you think the pressure if the fish is too much for you, and you may flip, lessen the drag on your reel, to give the fish more room to run. As he begins to tire out, you can then apply more drag, and become comfortable with pulling large fish in, from a kayak. As long as you think about these things, your ocean kayak fishing trips will be much more enjoyable, both during, and after.

The Ocean Kayaks Prowler 13 has got to be one of their best selling models. I see more anglers using this boat every weekend than practically every other manufacturer of fishing kayak, hands down. You can spot these banana boats from a mile away.

At 13 feet long though, it is still slim enough to be an extremely quick kayak, which is probably the reason it sells so well. You don’t have to worry too much about the swamp booty on this boat, the scuppers are arranged nicely to keep it from happening.

One of Ocean Kayaks bigger boats, the Big Game 13, has to be another kayak that I see a lot of anglers using. This one looks wide enough to stand up in, as well as carry the kitchen sink. I haven’t personally seen anyone slinging flies from one of the Big Game’s yet, but I am pretty sure it has happened already.. there are some pretty graceful kayak fishermen out there! There is a massive amount of storage on this boat, so if you are one of those anglers that likes to take everything with you, you might want to consider adding an Ocean Kayaks Big Game to your plastic fleet.

Alright, this last boat blew my mind when I had first seen it. I have tried putting trolling motors onto kayaks before with successful results, but Ocean Kayak outdid themselves with this one. The Ocean Kayaks Torque has a Minn Kota trolling motor built into the stern, that can be removed and replaced with a drop down skeg setup. These skegs are perfect for rocky areas where rudders would get busted off, but the hype is in the motor. From my tests, I didn’t receive very much speed from the trolling motors. A respectable 4mph or so, which is nice, but I was expecting power boat speeds.. I’m a guy.

From what I have seen with this one, they have remodeled the motor and moved the head with a dial for controls up to the center of the boat. The steering is controlled by a rudder, which means you really only get forward and reverse if the rudder is busted. I have tried using paddles to steer a motorized kayak, and trust me, it is not something that you want to experience. We’ll see in the next coming fishing seasons how these kayaks hold up, but one thing is for sure, you are going to see a lot more of Ocean Kayaks Prowler 13 and Big Game!

Look, I commend you for wanting to take the epic voyage and starting to find an ocean kayak for sale isn’t going to be all that hard.  The reason this happens is because of the same thing I just told you.  When people get out on the open water, they often freak when they can no longer see land, and actually lose their sense of direction, which happens all too easily.  Once you get out of sight of land, the waves often pick up which pushes you around a lot more.  If you aren’t careful, you and your entire group could be turned without ever realizing it, so for this reason alone you all must make sure you carry a mechanical compass, as well as a few of you having electronic satellite GPS systems.  These two items are life savers out there.

photo credit: mikebaird

A few other items that you need on ocean kayaks are a very loud whistle, a flare gun, and a solar lamp that shines 360 degrees with a high visibility white light.  You want it to be the whitest that you can get, because it is going to be used for both visibility as well as a flagging device should an approaching boat get to close, or you need to flag for help at night.  Having a loud whistle will help to alert any boats in your area during the day, while having a flare gun on board your ocean kayak will allow you to signal passing boats or helicopters at night.  Once you have gotten their attention, you are going to need the bright solar lamp to flag them to your position.

Above all, and no matter whether you are just out ocean kayaking for the afternoon, or taking a long ocean kayak fishing expedition, hopping from island to island, you need to have a satellite UHF/VHF radio on board, as well as a life jacket that will keep your face up out of the water should you become unconscious.  During the day, or even at night, when boats get in range, you can use the waterproof satellite radio to contact them and alert them of your presence.  Hopefully that solar lamp is charged so that you can help bring them closer in to you, without having to play Marco Polo after 3 days at sea.  So before you go and pick up your first used ocean kayak, make sure that you have gone to the expense of adding these necessary, life saving items to your boat.