Help With Kayak Cover

Hello All,

I'm a new member and I am looking for some advice from some duck boat experts. I recently bought an open top kayak for hunting last season (a M98 creekboat) and had some success on rivers and creeks around my area. My main issue was keeping the boat hidden when I was hunting water that I couldn't wade in. I'm looking to put together a portable blind that I can remove easily and that will effectively "close" the open top of my boat. I was thinking of building something like this Kayak cover




I know where I can get camo fabric/netting to cover it up, my main issue is creating the "ribbing" that gives the cover its structure> Any advice on materials? I was thinking tent poles or some type of bendable plastic that will hold its form when I put the blind on. Any advice would be much appreciated. The off season has been too long already...

-Andrew

Those are cool little boats. You could try a small diameter pvc w/ bimini hardware or maybe skip the hard ware and just make a frame out of stock pvc parts and bungie it down. Post up some pics of the boat if you get a chance. Luke

I would do some kind of hinged doors that you can take on and off and close over you to hide.

Honestly, I would just get a fast grass mat or two and weather them up and use those. I think building something on a Kayak is probably not easy for one and possibly makes the kayak unstable. Get 1 or 2 fast grass mats. You can roll them up and bungee them to the kayak. Unroll them right over the boat when you're ready to hunt.

I have a Carston's Puddler that is open. I put 8 eyes on it. 4 on the corners, 1 in the middle on each end and 1 on the tip of the bow& stern. I then hooked a bungee cord down each side, and one on each end, from bow to cockpit & stern to cockpit. I tied KillerWeed bundles to the bungees. For the Cockpit I used a piece of die-cut (leafy) camo material. I tied KillerWeed to that. I ran the bungees on the side through the last 12" down by my feet. Once I get to where I want to hunt, I just put on a face mask, lean back and pull the camo up over me.

If there is a good kayak shop in your area check them out. You can get bungee kits and do thye fast grass or just pull the local grass and hide it.

Rick

Murdock255,

That is a Jackson daytripper in your photo isn't it? I have the same boat and one disadvantage you will have hunting that boat is that it rides high in the water so your silhouette is high. I have some photos on facebook (search Russell Vrhovac) of my boat but generally I used bungee cord in 12" sections drilled into the side of the kayak, above the water line. The bungee was passed through the holes and tied into a half knot. This is what I used to fasten the die-cut camo material to the boat with. This material also works to hold any natural veg in place. One thing I did create for the kayak was a front tray system which fits into the lip of the boat and is held in place bunegee. There is two parallel pieces of wood with felt glued into place which holds my shotgun on the top of the tray and out of the bilge of the yak. I found that where the gun naturally sits between my legs and propped up in the boat also happens to be where the water likes to drip off of the paddle and handily into the breech of my scattergun. I used it to jump shoot (cans, bufflehead, scaup, scoter, mallard and ruddies) with a lot of success. For layout shooting I used a piece of diecut material the size of the cockpit and drape it over me as a blanket and kept my gun in the tray-rack. Good luck to you.