This is the Chetco river about 13 miles upstream from Brookings harbor. This river has a good run of salmon and steelhead trout and it is a favorite of local fisherman. It becomes my main interest from October to May after the ocean fishing for salmon shuts down. The record steelhead on this river is just over 21 lbs with 10-15 lb  fish fairly common. Of course the salmon get far larger, over 50 lbs, and they are a handfull when fishing from a small boat. 

This is my KF-12 anchored in knee deep water. I can drive the truck to the water and launch it easily . My wife then takes the truck to my 'take out' place and leaves it there for me. She had previously parked her car there and she can now get on with her day while I enjoy fishing my way down to the truck. It is an 8 to 12 mile run and will take me 3-5 hours to complete. The boat cart is left in the back of the truck and  it is used to move the boat from the river to the back of the truck. One person can launch and recover the boat with no assistance. 

One of the advantages of an electric powered boat is its stealthy capabilities. The animals are not threatened by a slow moving boat with a operator that is not paddling or making any fast moves. It allows getting up close and often without the animal even knowing you are there. Smaller animals will often come out and approach the boat to get a better look. 

This doe hung around while I fished a near by hole. We were  near a campground and the animal was not at all excited about my activity. After 10 mins I had not caught anything, and the deer moved off into the brush, and I looked for a more productive hole.

Here a couple of grebes  are looking for dinner. The river has a large population of smaller fish. Small trout and salmon smolts are plentiful and bite sized for these birds. When disturbed they leave with a lot of squaking that I would not like to have translated into english. 

I have not figured out what this animal is. His tail is furry and round and it is far larger than a river otter. It would hide for a few seconds and the come out and perch on a rock and watch me. It came down to the water and followed me down river for a while. He lost interest in me when we got to the next pile of rocks. It looked like it weighed about 15 lbs. I haven't seen another one.

These sailors picked up a salmon not far from me. This is a chinook  around 20 lbs. These are often caught drifting eggs  or pulling a spinner or flatfish. When it comes to bait, there is more faith placed on their favorites than you can find in any church. 

Here is a steelhead. It was 27 inches long and bit on a puff ball and some bright cloth, scented with a bit of roe. It is a average fish for these waters. Some folks get a little upset when they are released (cause they are soo hard to catch) and after a little rest this one went on his way. Steel head do not die after spawning, so we might meet again, when it is bigger. 

Now in the harbor, I came across this sea-lion. He is laying on his back holding his flippers in the sunshine to warm them. His nose is on the right, and he was napping.It is a bad idea to surprise one of these 800 lb critters, as they may become angered and they can make short work of a kayak. I have run into these guys several miles up the river, chasing fish. They are incredibly fast and will terrorize every fish in the area. When one shows up, it is time to find another fishing hole. 

So these are some of the animals  I have met on the river. There are many others, but they seem to show up most often when I have left the camera home. I wonder how they do that?

   I suspect this question has been around since our ancestors kicked their first rock down a hill. After a few rocks they observed the round ones were faster than the square ones, and the heavy ones blasted further thru the weeds than the lighter ones. Soon the bragging began, then the wagers and it has never stopped.
In the paddle boating world, this lead to rowing skulls with umteen young hunks on a very long boat with a little guy shouting insults from the stern. Then came a boat with hydrofoils under it and one hunk paddling furiously to get the boat up out of the water and onto the foil, setting new speed records for the rower. This has provided boaters with a lot of fun and consumed large expenditures of time, effort and cash. 
So How fast will it really go? Well if your boat has a displacement hull, that is it will not get up on a plane and skim over the surface of the water, then the answer is Not very.
 A displacement hull moves thru the water by parting the water and pushing it aside, creating 3 waves. The obvious waves are the bow wave and the stern wave. The faster you go bigger these waves become, and more energy is consumed to create them . If your boat is long and slender, the water has more time to move aside and let the boat thru and it has more time to come back to its original location as the boat passes. And being narrow, the water also does not have to move as far. So a long slender boat will be faster than a short, wide boat of equal weight (displacement). One might also conclude that doubling the boat speed will take 4 times as much power, because the boat is hitting twice as much water, twice as hard per unit of time. Well that would be true if it weren't for the third wave. 

Consider a 12 ft boat with a 5hp O/B motor and a 130 lb youngster at the tiller. The throttle is opened 1/4 full and the boat is churning along at 3- 4mph. Behind the boat the bow and stern wave can be seen. Now he opens the throttle to  max. The bow comes up and the stern diggs in, the motor is howling but the boat is only going 7mph. It looks like the boat is going up hill---and it is. The water cannot part fast enough so upward pressure builds under the boats bow and a hole appears at the stern creating the 'hill'. Now the boat is not only creating a bow and stern wave, it is creating a much bigger resistance the third wave or,,,The hill.. The boat is operating as a displacement hull, and if nothing changes then 7mph is its max speed. The speed at which the boats drag begins to dramatically increase is called the boats hull speed. It is calculated knowing the boats water line length, displacement (weight with paddler and gear included) and the motors h/p. 
 
The youngster will soon learn that if he shifts his weight toward the bow the boat will go further up that hill (because the waterline gets longer). And if he bounces the boat a little he can actually get over the hill and the boat accelerates to 15-20mph. He has made the transition from a displacement hull to a planing hull and he is no longer climbing over a hill of his own creation. If the boat had a 10 hp motor, it would have enough power to simply climb 'over the hill' and accelerate to its max speed. Notice also that it took 8-10 times the power to get there compared to his 3-4 mph speed . 

So how does this apply to a fishing kayak? First we have to look at the power source. Using a paddle only,  a fit paddler can generate about 3 lbs of thrust over a time span of 30 mins, and an olympic paddler can put out 5 lbs of thrust. Most of us are well below that. Given this very limited power, if we want speed, we have to look at boats with a very long waterline and very slick hulls ( 17-18 ft long with glass or carbon-fiber construction). The major drag sources on these boats is skin friction and wave making. Their slick hulls are also narrow and usually tippy. Even when equipped with rudders, they offer the paddler minimal steering authority and if you have a fishing rod in your hands, you have no authority at all. They are designed to be fast and go fairly straight. They can cruise at 4 mph if you are in good shape with a top speed of over 5 mph in a sprint. Now that is pretty good for a paddler that can generate only 1/4 hp for an expended period of time. 

But if you like to fish, the set of problems you want to address is quite different. Most of your fishing time is 
spent with a rod/reel in your hands, and boat control is very important to compensate for wind and current. So the boat must be controlled by some means other than a paddle.  The boat must be easy to transport, preferably without help from a friend or an enlisted stranger. It should offer a reasonable amount of dry storage for your gear. The decks should be free of hardware that hooks are sure to find. It should be a stealthy rig making little or no noise while in the fishing area, where waving a paddle is sure to catch the eye of fish and game. You will find a wood boat is much warmer and quieter than an aluminum or fiberglass boat. Finally is must be reliable and simple to operate. You don't always have time to think about the situation and a fast response can be the difference between a thrill, and a bad day. Finally, if the boat has a reliable motor you don't have to be a hunk to get the boat up to hull speed. You are encouraged to take a look at the KF10 and KF12 from the above perspective.