musse wrote:
For leashing the more heavy gear like rods I'm bit concerned that in case of falling does it make turning the kayak back more difficult? Maybe some stuff should be leashed to separate floats?
If you don't leash your gear to your kayak, or put flotation on your gear so it won't sink, you could lose a lot of expensive equipment, either by accidentally dropping it overboard, or by flipping your kayak.
The advantage of leashing gear to your kayak is that if you drop gear, or you flip your kayak over, the gear will stay attached to your kayak, and you won't lose it. I occasionally discover that a landing net or other piece of gear fell overboard quite a bit earlier, and is getting dragged around behind my kayak. If I hadn't leashed the equipment, even if it had flotation on it, I might not have beeen able to locate it in the lake or ocean. If you flip your kayak, and you have flotation on your gear, at least it won't end up on the bottom of the lake, although you will end up frantically churning around picking up up all the loose floating equipment. The advantage of leashing equipment to your kayak is that you won't have to locate the equipment if your kayak gets tipped over.
The disadvantage of leashing gear to your kayak is that if your kayak gets tipped over, you could get entangled in a hideous snarl of leashes. So use a minimum of leashes, avoid using long cord leases, and when possible use retractors which have enough tension so if your kayak flips over, the gear attached to the retractor will stay next to the retractor, and won't lend up hanging six feet below your kayak in a thicket of leashes. For example, I leash my water bottle and my fish measuring trough with leashes only about six inches long, unclip the gear before I use it, and re-clip it when I'm done using it. My lip gripper, fish bonker, pliers, folding knife, and scissors are on retractors, and I store them in the mesh pockets in the cockpit of my Revolution. My fishing poles are on small retractable dog leashes. I have a safety knife on my PFD, and if I get entangled in a leash, I could cut myself free.