My Compact Kokanee-Catching Kayak-Like Contraption

In early 2023 the company I worked for gave us a $700 stipend that we had to use for something health or fitness-related (they were pretty lenient as to what qualified).  I decided to buy an inflatable kayak for general paddling/camping/"adventure", and used the money towards a Sea Eagle 385FT.  I soon decided to try fishing from it, mostly still-fishing for trout with bait, but moved on to spinner and fly-fishing, then to trolling spoons and spinners, and eventually caught the Kokanee bug which is pretty much all I target these days.  

Kokanee became my favorite fresh-water fish to eat, they are fun to catch, and on a lot of lakes in my state they have pretty high catch limits.  They are not particularly tricky to catch, but you do have to troll slow and often quite deep so some changes to my setup were necessary.  Outside of early-season when they are shallow, I troll with a motor, two rods (where allowed) to maximize my harvest during often narrow bite-windows, and I almost always use a small down-rigger with one of the rods. 

I had to wire in a PWM speed controller because my motor wouldn't troll slow enough for Kokanee.  My battery box is strapped in in front of me to improve weight distribution which helps with slow-speed tracking.  I have a 3D printer so I designed and printed out an extendo-housing for my battery box to accommodate the speed controls and an ammeter/voltmeter.  I also added some more 12V accessory ports in the back of the box for general camping/emergency use.  I reinforced the top of the box so it could be used as mounting point for my fish-finder and phone holder.  Inflatables really can't have long sections of kayak-track for accessory mounting, so you have to make do.

I also designed and printed my own transducer arm/adapter, and just because I could, my own beverage-holder. They were designed to use Scotty brand slip disks for adjusting, but I decided to print my own "Shoddy" slip-disks (one of the disks is a firmish TPU for the requisite friction). They aren't quite as smooth in operation as the real ones but work fine for this use case.

Setting it up isn't that much more time consuming than when car-topping a regular fishing kayak, but yes, putting it away properly is a chore. You need to make sure everything is dry, and that involves removing the high-pressure floor.  It's a price I am willing to pay and have no regrets.  My garage is tiny and I really don't want to car top.  Everything fits in the back of my little Subaru Crosstrek, and also I store everything in a closet.