The Small Boat Prep

I didn’t get my little boat to be a prep. I got it because I like paddling around on our little local lakes. But is a small boat a legitimate prep? In certain kinds of circumstances, it can be. 

Salty and I talk it over in this podcast:

Spice on the lake in her kayak… note how impossible shore fishing would be in this 

location

Under what circumstances is a small boat a prep?

You can use a small boat — canoe, kayak, jonboat — to get to spots that can be very hard to get to along shores. The primary value of this is in fishing. Having spent a fair amount of time on a variety of small lakes, I’ve seen quite a lot of spots that are not reachable from shore. Many of these spots have rather large, fishy forms darting out from them as my kayak’s shadow passes over them.

Today, for example, I was on a very under-used county park. The near-shore water was so full of water lillies that it was all but unfishable from shore. Those lillies made great cover for the fish though, and I saw several popping at insects as I paddled by.

If you’ve got a good, fishable body of water close to where you expect to be, and it’s not one that has a lot of other people with boats that are likely to be fishing it when you need it, it might be worth it to get a little boat you can fish from.

Spice works her way through the lily pads

Other potential uses

Rivers and streams were historically used as highways into the back country, because it’s so much easier to paddle along a shore (or even pole the boat upstream) than to struggle through forest. One could potentially still use them for that, although the scenarios that make that necessary seem pretty remote.

Less remote is using the boat to get to a part of the shore that’s hard to approach from land. I saw places just today where I could have collected walnuts, autumn olive, cattail root, watercress, and acorns from spots whose land approaches were full of brush and marshy to boot. Shellfish collection is another good option.

Pretty, and great cover for fish… but a field of these makes fishing from the shore all but impossible

Learn what you’re doing in the boat first

I recently did a little canoeing on Yellowstone Lake with my hiking buddy. We planned our trip very conservatively (sticking close to shore in a narrow inlet and heading out upwind), being well aware of our lack of experience.

My partner and I were “Very Glad” about that conservatism when a completely un-forecasted wind storm arose. We were fine, going downwind in a relatively protected spot; but on the open lake the waves were four feet tall. Had we been less conservative, we would have been in a very dangerous place, almost certainly dumped in water cold enough to kill in about thirty minutes. The lesson: Water can be unpredictable and dangerous, so figure out how to handle the boat and know your limits before it gets ‘real’.

Salty’s tips for buying little boats

1. If prepping is one of your main reasons for buying a kayak or canoe, then make sure you buy one that’s in a dark or camo color. Spice’s bright orange kayak isn’t what one might call stealthy. Yes, we can paint it at need, but still that paint won’t stick very well and it would be an ongoing process. 
2. Small boats as preps should be as small as possible while still big enough to do the job. You want something that is easy to transport (and/or hide somewhere nearby the water), and you want something that can be handled by one person comfortably.
3. If you plan on buying a two person rig, be SURE that the two people who will be using the rig are compatible boat-partners. Small boat boating turns quickly from adventure to fiasco if the two people in the boat are not boating-compatible. Before you spend your hard-earned dollars, rent a two seater and try it out. 
4. The best time to buy is, of course, end of season… which means that the lowest prices of the year are probably out there right now.