If you’ve read the origin story of the kayak guys, you know that our specialty is hunting out of our modified layout kayaks. We get quite a few comments and questions about our duck hunting kayaks, both from other hunters in the marsh and our YouTube videos, and we are always happy to discuss our designs and offer tips and tricks to other hunters. In this article, I’m going to be going over some tips and tricks that I use, as well as a few products that really help make the conversion easy and simple. I hope to go a bit more in-depth here than I can in our build videos and really take a deep dive into the benefits of our hunting style. If you want to learn more about how to convert your own kayak into the ultimate duck hunting blind, then keep reading!
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Before you get too excited about your conversion, I want to make sure I am very up-front and clear about the limitations of these layout kayaks. When we first started hunting out of our kayaks, we had very grandiose ideas of what we would be able to accomplish, and not quite all them played out how we thought. Since the conversion process involves cutting out a lot of the structural material of the kayak, it can make it a little bit on the flimsy side. This has caused us to have a few concerns about taking it out on deep water.
In addition, the way your weight is distributed in the kayak when you layout severely reduces the amount of freeboard (the distance between the water and the top of your boat). Couple this with the decreased rigidity, and you have a boat that is much more prone to getting swamped. While this is still a pretty low risk, my boat has gotten swamped on one hunt, and Marcus’s boat has also been swamped once (on the same hunt- we might have pushed a little too hard and hunted in some pretty bad conditions). While this is pretty low risk (we’ve got a current swamp rate of about 1%) it’s still not something I want to risk when the potential consequence is drowning or hypothermia.
The other main limitation is the ability to paddle and maneuver the kayak. Since we like to go with a pontoon-style hull to give us the best stability, it can make it pretty difficult to paddle and maneuver it around. Once you get it loaded down with all your decoys and gear (and snacks!) it can make it anywhere from difficult to impossible to paddle it across the marsh. If you have dreams of hopping in your layout kayak and paddling across the reservoir to your secret honey-hole, then you may want to look into a different style of boat.
Once you get past what these layout boats aren’t able to do very well, you get into some pretty incredible benefits. I’ll start with the concealability. The kayak I use is a Pelican Trailblazer 100, which is a lightweight 10-foot kayak. Since I am getting pretty close to the weight limit at 6’ tall and 220 pounds, it rides pretty low in the water when I get laid out in the bottom of the boat. This makes for an incredibly low profile hunting blind since the whole thing only sticks out of the water by about 12 inches! This allows you to hunt in many places where other people can’t, and we have even had marginal success setting our layout boats up in the water with only a few sparse weeds. Without a doubt, the concealability of these boats is their biggest advantage.
Another huge benefit is the weight. The initial kayak starts out at a mere 38 pounds, and by the time we are done with the modifications it still weighs under 40 pounds. This is by far the lightest possible solution to layout boat hunting that you can get, which is one of our primary concerns. My boat can be very easily loaded and unloaded in the back of a truck by one person, and is regularly drug across the ground up to a half-mile just to get to our hunting spot! If you do a lot of walk-in hunting, believe me, the low weight of these boats will be a godsend on those early morning walks to the marsh.
To sum it all up, we have spent the past several years creating the absolute perfect blind for our hunting style. If you hunt shallow water public prairie marshes, this design is going to be perfect for you as well. When you start hunting late-season pressured birds, you will need a blind design that gives you the ultimate concealability while still being light enough to drag on your long walks to your hunting spot. For us, these kayaks check every box that we need on these type of hunts.
Now that you understand the benefits and drawbacks of this layout boat design, it’s time to discuss the build process. Since I cover the basic design and assembly methods pretty well in the video, I’m going to do a bit of a deeper dive into the tricks and some of the products I used in the construction of this boat.
First and foremost, I want to talk about the four rivers layout boat seat. This seat can be a bit pricey at around $80, but I can guarantee it is worth it. Making a comfortable seat that allows you to sit in a variety of positions is hands down the hardest part of your layout kayak build, so the best solution to this is to just buy a product that already fits the bill perfectly! Seriously guys, we’ve tried going the DIY route on this one, and it just doesn’t work. I’m normally a huge advocate for saving money and building things yourself, but in this scenario, it’s a no-brainer to just buy the seat.
The second main component to my kayak build is the 1/2” electrical conduit frame. As you’ll see in the video, we use a conduit bender like this one to get perfectly smooth, sweeping angles without kinking the conduit. We’ve tried doing it without the conduit bender, and it just doesn’t work. You’ll end up kinking your conduit and creating weak points that will always fail at the most inopportune times during season. If you plan on building a similar layout kayak design, purchasing a conduit bender is an absolute must.
As you follow along in the video, the next step in the build is to cover your frame with camouflage Cordura canvas. While I like to purchase mine from a local surplus store (always shop local when you can!) if you’re in a pinch or can’t find any, this is more or less the exact same stuff. This is the perfect material for covering your layout kayak as it’s tough, durable, water-resistant coating does wonders to shed rain and keep you dry inside your boat no matter the conditions. It also provides a great base to run stubble straps on for attaching natural vegetation. In the past, you have probably seen us use chicken wire or plastic garden netting to attach raffia grass to, but I am very excited about my all fabric-covered design this year and am very excited to hunt with it.
The next tip has less to do with the actual construction of the boat and more about the transportation. The addition of this kayak cart (featured in several of our videos, as well as our 2018 season intro video) has done wonders to allow us to access the hidden waterholes deep inside our public land hunting spots. While these carts certainly have their limitations, if you find yourself dragging your boat more than 75 yards across the ground, this cart is a very worthwhile investment. Even if you decide to go with a totally different boat and design, this cart will still prove to be a very worthwhile investment.
The last tip I’m going to include here is the addition of my elastic stubble straps. I purchased 100 feet of this black nylon shock cord and attached several strips of it to my blind cover with zip ties. While the cord is a bit shiny, it’s not hard to dull it up by hitting it with some camo spray paint. This is another major improvement that I am very excited for this year. Having elastic stubble straps is going to dramatically decrease the amount of time I have to spend brushing in my kayak in the morning, and I’ll be able to quickly and securely attach large amounts of brush to my blind. Last year I feel like we became way too reliant on our raffia grass base layer, and it just didn’t cut the mustard when we started getting on those wary late-season mallards.
I think that just about wraps up my thoughts, tips, and tricks on this year’s kayak design. If you follow our YouTube channel (which you should, we put out some awesome content) you already know that we are passionate about our hunting style and work tirelessly to improve on our kayak designs. It seems like every single year our designs get better and better. We improve our comfort, concealment, and portability, all of which translates to more time in the marsh and more ducks in the bag. I hope this video and article gives you some good insight and inspires you to create your own ultimate duck hunting kayak blind! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to let us know by sending us a message. We are always happy to talk about our layout boats, hunting style, and offer any helpful suggestions or guide you through your very own personal build!
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