Keep fish cool by insulating the area under the front hatch of your kayak

You can keep big fish cool by insulating the area under the front hatch of your kayak.

As soon as I catch a fish, I put it on ice to keep the meat in good condition.  I strap a 40 quart cooler on the back of my kayak for that purpose.



However, sometimes I catch or spear fish which are too big for my cooler.





Leaving fish hanging in the water on a stringer isn’t good for the meat, particularly if the water is warm, and it’s a lot of work dragging a stringer of big fish back to your launch site behind your kayak.  So I turned the area under the front hatch of my kayak into a second cooler by insulating it.

First, I made a partition out of 2 inch building foam for the back of the area under the hatch, to separate the area under the hatch from the rest of the area inside my kayak.  It took some work to make the partition fit snugly inside my kayak.  Then I lined the inside of the area under the hatch with closed cell foam from a winter-thickness sleeping pad.  It was really tricky cutting the foam so it laid fairly smoothly inside the complicated shape of the area under the hatch.  To hold up the piece of foam which insulates the underside of the top deck of the kayak, I jammed 2 foot long sections of pool noodle into the upper left and upper right corners of the area under the hatch.  I cut a piece of foam to act as a lid for the insulated area.  To keep the area under the hatch cool, I put a couple of bottles of ice in the insulated area.



Then I line the inside of the area under the hatch with an oversized heavy-duty garbage bag.  To make it easier to feed a big fish into the hatch over the top of my fish finder and various rod holders, I stuff the end of the bag all the way up into the nose of the kayak, and I open up the mouth of the bag and tuck it under the foam around the opening.  Then I throw some ice cubes into the bag.



Then I put the foam lid on top of the opening into the insulated area.



Because the hatch on my Trident is black, to help keep the insulated area cool, I lay a white towel on top of the hatch, and I keep the towel wet.



I've been using this set-up for several years, and it works well.  The bottles of ice and the ice cubes stay mostly frozen even after a full day of paddling around in hot sunny weather, and do a pretty good job of keeping any big fish I catch cool.

Insulating the area under the front hatch of a kayak is kind of a project, but will allow you to keep big fish in good condition during a long day on the water.  If the teeth or fins of a fish poke holes in the plastic bag, and you get fishy water inside your kayak, you better hose out your kayak and leave it open to dry, or you'll turn your kayak into a big plastic stink bomb.  Walmart, Home Depot, and similar stores may have some heavy-duty monster-sized "contractor bags" which resist damage pretty well.

Cool solution, I like it!

That lake in the top pic...is that in the swan?

Yes, it's Lindbergh Lake, with the Swan Range in the background.

Nice.  Love that area.  Missions, too.  Thanks for sharing.