I suggest that you mount a pair of gear tracks on the gunwales of your 11’ Revolution in front of the pockets. This will provide you with great flexibility about how you set up your kayak, both from day to day and during a single day. It will let you change the way your kayak is set up for different kinds of fishing. It will allow you to change the way your kayak is set up as you learn from experience and from other kayakers. It will let you change from one brand of accessories to another. The disadvantage of installing fixed mounts on your kayak is that in six months you may wish you had installed the fixed mount someplace else, or you may wish you had installed a different brand of mount.
Here is where I installed gear tracks on my 13’ Revolution. I find that I locate most of my gear on the rear half of these tracks, where it is easier to reach, so if you want to save money, you could install shorter tracks.
Here is the way I set up my kayak for trolling and downrigger trolling. For an explanation of why I set it up that way, and how I mounted the downrigger, see
http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/in ... #msg138905 . The rod is located about two inches behind my left toe when my left pedal is all of the way back. This puts it completely out of the way of my pedal stroke, but close enough to my seat so I can grab it quickly when I get a strike.
But with gear tracks, you can do just about anything. For example, here is how I can set up my kayak to downrigger troll off the right side of my kayak while running a planer board off the left side of my kayak, with a rear view mirror to monitor the planer board. See
http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/in ... ic=17409.0 for details. This is perhaps a little over the top, but the point is, if you base your kayak outfitting on gear tracks, the tracks give you the flexibility to do just about anything.
Before you purchase any tracks, reach inside your kayak and feel the inside of the gunwale in the area where you are thinking of installing the tracks. Check the shape of the area, and look for obstructions, cables, and other things which may interfere with installing the track. The inside of the gunwale of a 13’ Revolution in the area next to the cockpit is pretty narrow and arched, and I suspect that an 11’ Revolution is similar. If you want to install the gear track using bolts and nuts, it’s difficult to drill holes which are lined up accurately in the arched area inside the gunwales. The holes are likely to emerge on an angled surface inside the gunwale. You probably aren’t going to be able to use a backer bar, and if you use fender washers, you’ll probably need to bend them to fit the arched inside of the gunwale. I used YakAttack 1.75 gear tracks. They are hideously expensive, but a major advantage of them if you have a Revolution is that they can be mounted with screws from the outside of the kayak easily and quickly. And because they are wide, they do an excellent job of resisting the leverage from rod holders. I have heard a rumor that Lucid Fishing is about to start offering very similar gear tracks which are less expensive, but they aren’t shown in Lucid’s webpage yet.
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