By Scott MacGregor, Editor-in-Chief
Like Dougie, kayak fishing is just beyond infancy. This is an early stage of development where growth is irregular and it occurs in spurts. A stage when different parts of the body grow at different rates.
Editors of magazines sometimes feel like parents arguing about what is best for our little sport and wonder what it will be when it grows up. We ask ourselves questions like: What is kayak fishing? Should we have canoes in our buyer’s guide? (They’re allowed in kayak fishing tournaments.) What about inflatables? What if it has oars, flippers or a trolling motor?
These are important questions when it comes to putting together a magazine, and the answers will shape kayak fishing. A kayak by definition is, “A canoe of a type used originally by the Eskimo, made of a light frame with a watertight covering having a small opening in the top to sit in.” This traditional defi nition pretty much eliminates every fishing kayak on the market today.
So we need to cast the net a little wider. As the publisher of paddling magazines my layman defi nition of kayaking is less anthropological and more posterior. I figure if you’re sitting on your butt and moving across water using a stick with two blades, then you’re kayaking. And this is what you’ll fi nd when you flip through our “2008 Fishing Kayak Buyer’s Guide.”
Where my definition breaks down is with innovative companies like Hobie and Native who offer foot-operated propulsion systems. While traditional kayakers shudder at the thought, anglers don’t seem to give a rat’s ass (nor I bet would the Eskimos who would have loved the ability to chase seals, harpoons in both hands).
In the last five years we’ve seen marvelous innovations in fi shing kayaks, but they still, for the most part, look like kayaks. This is because the growth spurt now is in four main areas—California, Texas, Florida and New England—where kayaks work really well.
Our office is in God’s country, rugged Canadian Shield blessed with deep inland lakes, rivers and scruffy lumberjacks. This is largemouth, walleye and muskie territory. It is a land opened by the voyageurs, a land rich in canoeing heritage. For three years my fully rigged sit-on-top kayak has hung out the back of my pickup.
Never have I met a guy in a plaid fl annel shirt who hasn’t asked, “Why wouldn’t you just canoe?” And then, “Where does the trolling motor go?”
As freshwater fishermen find kayak fishing the definition of what is a fishing kayak will become even more murky. They are likely to become more like canoes. But what does it matter?
Had we’d started this magazine 10 years ago when anglers were bungiecording tackle boxes to longboards, we’d have called it Board Angler.
Maybe in 10 years when Dougie is a teenager he’ll look back laughing at this photograph of us on my sit-on-top kayak, “So that’s why you called the magazine Kayak Angler.” No matter what kayak fishing becomes I just hope we’ll be fishing together in something without a metallic paint job.
SCOTT MACGREGOR is the publisher of Kayak Angler, Rapid, Adventure Kayak, Canoeroots and Family Camping magazines. Dougie caught more fi sh last summer.
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