When you think of kayak fishing, you probably picture somebody paddling around a lake in a little plastic boat, hoping to catch a few bass.
You probably don’t picture a $25,000 fishing machine loaded with motors, electronics and enough gadgets to make a traditional bass boat jealous.
But that’s exactly what some professional kayak anglers are using these days.
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“I know there’s a couple guys out here running $25,000 kayaks,” three-time national champion Wyatt Hammond told OutKick OutDoors. “I always see everybody talking about it like, ‘That looks like a spaceship compared to a kayak.'”
And while that might sound ridiculous to the average weekend fisherman, Hammond doesn’t see anything particularly unusual about it.
“I just kind of equate it to the highest-end cars versus the cars that most people drive,” he explained. “They look so far beyond what you’d imagine a car to look like. Or just even the bass boats that are running around with five or six depth finders on them.
“The highest-end boats versus the highest-end kayaks are pretty comparable.”
Watch Wyatt Hammond’s full interview with OutKick OutDoors here:
Hammond knows a thing or two about competitive kayak fishing. He won the 2025 Bassmaster Kayak Series National Championship, along with back-to-back Kayak Bass Fishing (KBF) National Championships in 2024 and 2025.
And last month, he came within just 2 inches of defending his Bassmaster title at Lake Murray in South Carolina.
But despite competing at the highest level of the sport, Hammond says one of the biggest reasons he chose kayak fishing over traditional bass boat tournaments was actually the cost.
He used to own a bass boat himself, but eventually decided the expenses weren’t worth it.
“I ended up having to get rid of it because of the maintenance fees and all of that,” he said. “Just putting gas in it all the time — a 36-gallon tank. It’s, you know, $150 just to put gas in it, and then tires and all the maintenance things like that.”
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His kayak, on the other hand, is a different story.
“I couldn’t tell you the last time I put gas in my kayak,” Hammond joked.
Of course, that doesn’t mean his current setup is cheap. Hammond is a member of the Old Town pro team and fishes out of an AutoPilot 136, a motorized fishing kayak that can be outfitted with sophisticated electronics and plenty of other accessories.
But he insists you don’t have to spend anywhere near $25,000 to get started.
Hammond admits he took what he calls the “expensive route” when he first got into kayak fishing.
“I went the very expensive route of buying a $200 kayak, and then a $400 kayak, and then a $700 kayak, and then a $2,000 kayak, and then a $5,000 kayak,” he laughed.
Looking back, he says he would have been better off skipping a few of those upgrades and investing in a decent pedal-drive kayak from the beginning.
“I always kind of suggest going with, at the very least, a pedal-drive kayak if you want to get into the kayak fishing world, because that opens up your mobility around the lake, as well as it lets you be hands-free.”
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That means anglers can cast, change lures or work their electronics while continuing to move through the water.
And Hammond says a middle-of-the-road setup is more than enough to compete.
He even used one of his older kayaks at a national championship on Lake Guntersville in Alabama last year.
“I actually paddled that kayak,” he said. “You don’t need too, too much.”
Beyond the price tag, Hammond says fishing from a kayak has actually made him a better angler.
Unlike competitors in high-powered bass boats, who can race miles across a lake in search of better fishing, kayak anglers have to be more deliberate about where they spend their time.
“You can’t be kind of ADHD on a kayak, because you can’t really up and just run 10 miles down the lake if you want to,” he explained.
“So it kind of helps you as a fisherman as well. It helps you learn to break down water, and you’re stuck in your little area, more or less. So you’ve got to figure out how all the fish are acting and make the best of the area that you choose.”
And that’s probably the most interesting thing about the rise of high-tech kayak fishing.
Sure, some competitors are spending enough money on their setups to buy a decent used car. But at its core, the sport still rewards anglers who know how to find fish and make the most of what’s in front of them.
Whether they’re fishing from a $25,000 spaceship or something a whole lot closer to the kayak sitting in your garage.
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