Newbie looking to buy

I am wanting to buy a couple of Kayak’s over winter, plus you can’t find them right now. I hoping to find a sit in Kayak that is good in lake water and river fishing or river floating, no crazy rapids, I don’t want to break the bank since I will be buying 2 at the same time.

I was looking at the Ascend FS10, part of the reason is so I can attach a trolling motor to help get around larger lakes or to go up the river and float back. Thoughts?

I deplore buttboats…but here’s 19 reviews…I noticed it seems to be a bass pro/cabelas product. Looking at bass pro’s site, they were having inventory awareness issues. I know their inventory awareness issues have ticked off a lot of ammo buyers.

The Ascends are bulky, heavy and slow. Probably OK for floating and fishing but not something you want to try to move in any direction for any distance. There are better inexpensive boats. And 10’ is awfully short and therefore has to be wide to achieve volume to float an adult – you don’t mention your size. Could be too small if you are a tall or big guy and too wide if you are a shorter person.

There is a guy who makes excellent YouTube videos evaluating inexpensive “starter” kayaks. He works for a higher end outfitter but is open minded about discount boats and test paddles all of them. You can learn a lot about what features to look for at various price points from his reviews. I would take reviews on THIS site with a grain of salt especially for entry level boats. 99% of the people reviewing their “new” boats have never paddled anything else and don’t have a clue about how they perform compared to something else. The “10 out of 10” ratings given to many dreadful cheap plastic “pool toys” in the reviews are cringeworthy. Kind of like somebody who has been barefoot all their life getting a pair of plastic flip flops and reporting that they are “the best shoes EVER.”

Here’s a link to the Headwaters guy’s kayak reviews. He has several others with other price points but this is a good place to start. He found some surprising winners:

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