Kayak, paddleboard and small boat

Kayak and paddleboard fishing

A kayak puts you over fish the shore can't reach: the rough ground off a point, the edge of a channel, the mackerel shoal 200m out. It's also the easiest way to get into trouble at sea. Here is how I'd start: kayak first, paddleboard on the calmest days, and a sailing dinghy if the bug bites. Safety gets the most space, because it matters most.

In short

1st

Kayak first

Seated, low and stable, with room for a crate. Learn on flat water, practise capsizes, then fish sheltered bays within a few hundred metres of the shore.

2

Rods at most

One short bottom rod and one light lure rod, both leashed. Everything else stays in the car.

10kn

Wind limit

Under about 10 knots, gusts included, and never blowing off the land. Offshore wind is what gets kayakers and paddleboarders into trouble.

16

VHF channel

Channel 16 for distress and calling. To transmit you need an operator's certificate and a free Ofcom licence for the radio.

Where to start

  1. Flat water first

    A lake where paddling is allowed (ask first), or a sheltered harbour or marina basin on a still day. Learn to paddle straight, turn, stop, and paddle into a breeze.

  2. Capsize and re-entry drills

    In shallow, sheltered water, with a friend, wearing the clothes and buoyancy aid you'll fish in. Fall out on purpose and climb back on: kick your legs up behind you, slide across on your belly, roll onto your back into the seat, then swing your legs in. Repeat until it's routine, then do it with your kit aboard, then out of your depth.

  3. Fish the edges

    Sheltered bays and harbour edges, within a few hundred metres of the shore, on a calm day around slack water on a neap tide.

  4. Add tide slowly

    Short drifts on neaps, planned so the tide brings you back towards the launch. Leave headlands, harbour mouths and big spring tides until you know how fast you drift and how fast you can paddle.

Kayak, board or dinghy?

  • Sit-on-top or inflatable kayak: the best fishing platform of the three to start with. Inflatables are light and handy but catch the wind, so wind limits matter even more.
  • Paddleboard: standing, you're a sail. Keep it for flat calm days close in, with one lure rod.
  • Sailing dinghy: roomy and steady enough to fish from, and it can sail or be rowed home. It takes lessons first. See moving on to a dinghy.
  • Kayak sails: fun with an onshore breeze to carry you home or along the shore. Never use one to go out, and stow it to fish.

Rods and rigs

Short rods suit a kayak. You sit low, fish straight down or a short way downtide, and land fish right beside you, so casting distance doesn't matter. A rod of about 7ft swings round the bow easily, sits in a holder behind you without catching the paddle, and gives a fish less leverage. Take two at most.

Light lure

An LRF rod, about 5–20g

Round harbour walls, moorings and rocky edges in a few metres of water. A drop-shot fished straight down, an LRF micro jig, or small metals. Pollack, wrasse, pouting, mackerel, garfish. Best in slack water: a few grams won't hold bottom from a drifting kayak in any real tide. More on these rods in Choosing tackle.

Bottom rod

A 7ft light boat rod with a small multiplier

A 12–20lb class rod with a small star-drag multiplier is a boat outfit scaled down for a kayak. Fished straight down or a short way downtide with light leads of 1–4oz, it takes dabs, plaice, flounder, gurnard, whiting in autumn, and pollack over rough ground. Set-up below.

Lure and feathers

A travel spinning rod, about 15–40g

Mackerel feathers cut down to three hooks at most, with a 1–2oz lead: six hooks with six mackerel on is chaos beside you. Casting metals of 20–40g, and bass lures: paddle tails, weedless soft plastics and surface lures along rocky edges at dawn.

The small-multiplier bottom set-up

  • Line. About 20lb braid for low drag in the tide and good feel, with 3–5m of 30lb mono or fluorocarbon leader.
  • Rigs. A two-hook flapper (lead at the bottom, two short snoods above, fished straight down) for dabs, whiting and gurnard. A running ledger or a baited spinner on a longer snood for plaice and flounder on the drift. Size 4 to 1 hooks with worm, mackerel strip or squid.
  • Leads. 1–4oz, just enough to hold or bounce along the bottom. If 4oz won't keep in touch, the tide is too strong to be out in a kayak.
  • Lowering. Put the reel in free spool and let the lead down with your thumb resting on the spool. That stops an overrun (a bird's nest) and lets you feel the lead touch bottom. Click into gear and wind up a turn.
  • Winding. Most small multipliers have no level-wind, so guide the braid evenly across the spool with your thumb.
  • Fishing it. At anchor, let the lead trundle a few metres downtide. On the drift, lift and lower every few seconds and let out line as the depth changes.

Leave ashore

  • Beachcasters, long spinning rods and heavy boat rods: too long, too heavy, and built for leads you won't use afloat.
  • Big six-hook feather strings and treble-hooked lures. Barbless or crushed barbs are kinder to fish, to you and to an inflatable hull.
  • Anything you can't afford to lose overboard, unless it's leashed.

Unhook over a crate or a towel, and watch for spines: weever, gurnard and bass all have them.

Rigging the kayak

tide 1Bow into the tide,line from the trolley ring 2Float on a clipunclip and drift offif you need to 3Grapnel and chain line about 3 times the depth
Anchor from the bow or stern only, through a trolley, and only in slack or gentle tide.

Anchoring rules

  • Never anchor from the side. Tide pushing against a kayak held side-on can tip it over or pull the side under.
  • Fit an anchor trolley: a loop of line through a pulley at bow and stern, with a ring on it. Clip the anchor line to the ring and slide it to whichever end faces the tide.
  • Float on a quick-release clip. If wind or tide gets up, or the anchor jams, unclip and drift free. The float marks the anchor so you can come back for it.
  • Don't anchor in strong tide, in a channel or fairway, or near a tide race.
  • Knife within reach, on your buoyancy aid, to cut any line in a hurry.
  • A 0.7–1.5kg folding grapnel with a short chain is plenty. Pay out about three times the depth.

Leashes

A leash on every rod and on the paddle. Keep them short and tidy: in a capsize, long leashes can wrap round you. Use clips you can undo with one hand.

Drift chute

A small drogue (sea anchor) slows your drift in a breeze, so baits stay on the bottom without anchoring. Handy where anchoring isn't safe.

Crate or bag, tied in

A crate with rod tubes, or a dry bag, clipped to the kayak. Tackle, pliers and bait go in it. Phone, radio and knife go on you, not in the crate.

Landing

A short-handled landing net or a lip grip. Swinging fish in by the line is how hooks end up in hands and hulls.

Keeping fish

A small cool bag with an ice pack, clipped in. Kill and bleed what you keep straight away (see sea to plate), and return the rest quickly.

Be seen

A bright buoyancy aid and hat, and a flag on a short pole if you can fit one. Carry a white torch if there's any chance of being out at dusk.

Paddleboard fishing

Lures only

One light rod with a few jig heads, small metals and a drop-shot. No bait, no anchor in tide, no crate full of kit.

Kneel to fish

Paddle standing if you like, but kneel or sit to cast, play and unhook fish. It's steadier, and you catch far less wind.

Flat calm, close in

A board with you standing on it is a sail. Only on the calmest days, with no offshore breeze, close to the beach and inside a sheltered bay.

Leash and buoyancy

Wear a buoyancy aid and keep the board leashed to you: it's your liferaft. Where there's current, a quick-release waist leash is safer than an ankle leash.

Safety

Afloat, the sea decides more than it does on the shore. Most kayak and paddleboard rescues come down to the same few things: offshore wind, tide, cold water, and no way of calling for help.

The big one

Offshore wind

A wind blowing off the land feels gentle on the beach, because the land shelters you. A few hundred metres out it's stronger, and it pushes you out to sea. Inflatables catch the wind badly, and few people can paddle back into 10–15 knots for long. Go only when the wind is under about 10 knots, gusts included, and not offshore. If it swings offshore or picks up while you're out, head in straight away.

Forecast

Check it twice

Read the Met Office inshore waters forecast for your stretch of coast, plus a wind forecast that shows gusts and direction hour by hour. Check the night before and again at the launch. If the forecast and the sea disagree, believe the sea.

Tide

Plan to come back with it

Paddle out against the tide or wind and let them bring you home, never the other way round. Fish around slack water and on neaps to start. EasyTide gives times and heights; the speed and direction of the tidal stream are on charts and in tidal stream atlases. Avoid headlands and harbour mouths when the tide is running.

Buoyancy

A foam buoyancy aid to paddle

Wear a foam buoyancy aid, zipped up, every time. It works without inflating, keeps working if it's nicked, and doesn't get in the way when you climb back on. An auto-inflating lifejacket can be awkward to re-enter in and isn't designed for repeated dunkings. Keep it for rocks, piers and boats.

Cold water

Dress for the swim

Dress for falling in, not for the air temperature: British seas stay cold well into summer. A wetsuit, or a drysuit with warm layers underneath, and no cotton. If you go in, cold water shock makes you gasp: float first, lean back and keep your airway clear for a minute or two until your breathing settles (the RNLI's Float to Live advice), then climb back on.

Your plan

Tell someone

Where you're launching, where you're going, when you'll be back, and what to do if you're not: call 999 and ask for the Coastguard. The RYA SafeTrx app logs your trip and alerts your contact if you're overdue. Go with others when you can.

Carry on you, every trip

  • A handheld VHF, clipped to your buoyancy aid, switched on, on channel 16. See VHF.
  • A phone in a waterproof pouch, also on you. In trouble, call 999 or 112 and ask for the Coastguard.
  • A knife and a whistle on the buoyancy aid.
  • A PLB if you can: a personal locator beacon sends your position to rescuers by satellite. Register it with the UK Beacon Registry (it's free) and wear it, not pack it. It can't talk, so it adds to a radio rather than replacing one.
  • A head torch, water and a snack.

Rules and permissions

  • Launching: harbour slipways may need permission or a fee, and harbours have byelaws. Keep out of fairways and away from moorings in use, and ask the harbour master where you can fish.
  • Fishing rules apply afloat. Bass: 3 a day, 42cm minimum, release only from 1 February to 31 March. In a bass nursery area you may not fish for bass from a boat in the dates set, and a kayak counts as a boat. See Rules.
  • Tope, common skate and angel shark always go back.
  • The RNLI and HM Coastguard publish kayak and paddleboard safety advice. Read it before your first trip, and see coastal safety.

VHF radio

  • Channel 16 is for distress, urgent safety calls and first contact. HM Coastguard listens on it, and once you've made contact they'll tell you which working channel to move to (often 67 for small craft in the UK).
  • DSC (digital selective calling) sends an automatic distress alert with your position at the press of a button, but only from a DSC radio with GPS and a registered MMSI number. Many basic handhelds aren't DSC: on those, you call on channel 16 by voice. Check whether yours has DSC.
  • Range from a handheld at sea level is only a few miles, less behind headlands. Choose one that floats, and leash it anyway.
  • Charge it the night before, keep it on 16 and listen. You'll hear the Coastguard announce weather and safety broadcasts.
  • Licences. To transmit you need an operator's certificate, the RYA Short Range Certificate (SRC), which is a one-day course, and a Ship Portable Radio Licence from Ofcom for the handheld itself, which is free if you apply online. In a real emergency anyone may call for help, but get both before you rely on it.

A Mayday call, by voice

  • Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.
  • This is (your name or the boat's name), three times.
  • Mayday (name) once more, then your position: distance and direction from a landmark.
  • What's wrong and what help you need.
  • How many people, and anything else useful (kayak colour, buoyancy aids on).
  • Over. Then listen. If there's no answer, repeat.

The SRC course teaches the exact form, plus Pan-Pan for urgent calls that aren't life-threatening. If you have signal, a 999 call to the Coastguard works too.

Moving on to a dinghy

  1. Try a taster

    Most sailing clubs run taster sessions. Ask about membership, training and whether members crew in bigger, steadier dinghies.

  2. Learn properly

    RYA Start Sailing (Level 1) and Basic Skills (Level 2), at a club or RYA training centre, then Seamanship Skills and courses for planning coastal day trips. Course names change now and then, so check with the club.

  3. Crew for others

    Club members are often glad of crew. Time on someone else's boat teaches more than any book.

  4. Then buy, second-hand

    Take someone experienced to look a boat over: hull, buoyancy tanks, rigging, sails and the trailer.

A dinghy for fishing

  • Pick a stable, roomy cruising dinghy rather than a racer. The 16ft Wayfarer is the classic: room for two or three people, rods and a cool box, and plenty on the second-hand market.
  • One that can be rowed home in a calm, or takes a small outboard bracket, is far more useful for fishing.
  • Drop the sails, anchor from the bow and fish as from a kayak, with the same rods and light leads. Keep fishing for when the boat is under control.

Before your first sea trip

Kit

  • Foam buoyancy aid, with knife and whistle
  • Rod and paddle leashes
  • Anchor, chain, float and an anchor trolley
  • Wetsuit or drysuit
  • Phone in a waterproof pouch
  • Handheld VHF; a PLB if you can

Skills

  • Capsize and re-entry, practised until routine
  • Paddling into a breeze for half an hour
  • Reading the inshore waters forecast and tide times
  • The RYA SRC course

Paperwork

  • Ofcom Ship Portable Radio Licence (free online)
  • PLB registered with the UK Beacon Registry
  • Launch permission and harbour byelaws checked
  • Trip plan left with someone ashore

Rules, launch permissions and byelaws vary by harbour. Check locally before you launch.