malibu mini-x

Hi All,

Noobie here who has recently been bitten by the Kayak fishing bug. Been reading up on various yaks and the Malibu Mini-X seems to get great reviews. That being said, I haven't heard much out of guys in the PNW, mostly SoCal and Southern States. Is anybody up here running a Malibu Kayak and what are your thoughts, opinions, etc. on it or are there any other recommendations that you have as opposed to that yak? I am looking for something easy to haul, durable, relatively cheap, and a nice little yak that works well as an all arounder. Am out of Salem and will be fishing everything from lakes in the cascades to the lower Salmon, Siletz, and Nestucca Rivers and the occasional shot out of Depoe Bay, with the odd reservoir in EO tossed in for good measure. Would love to hear what PNW paddlers think is the best craft and what you paid/where you bought, would be nice as well.

Rgds,
Jack

Welcome to NWKA Jack.

I've only yakked and fished a Hobie Outback so no help there but I'm sure someone here has and can point you in the right direction. Personally, i wouldn't get a Kayak that's under 12 feet, so you have enough room for gear and fish and comfort.

You don't see many mini-X's up here in the NW because there are very few Malibu dealers.  I don't know anyone that has one ... well, except there is the one guy out on the coast (can't remember his username right now).  Although I just saw another one on someone's truck just yesterday.

I do know quite a few people at NCKA that use them,  although for many people it is NOT their primary kayak.  The mini-X gets more use on rivers and smaller water.

-Allen

I see quite a bit of mention around Hobie and OK? Are those the two predominate brands up here? Recommended retailers in Oregon?

Yup.  OK and Hobie are the primary brands up here.  I'm going to guess about 80% of the SOT fishing kayaks we use are either of these 2, perhaps equal portions of the 80%.  Something like that.  Good poll topic though.

OutdoorPlay.com for OK's.

-Allen

I seriously considered the Mini-X before getting my Prowler 13 instead.  The shorter length, light weight, and price point are what attracted me most.  What ultimately changed my mind was length (speed) and open water handling.  Being new to the "Cure" I figured the majority of people couldn't be wrong about the P13...  Ultimately it comes down to want you want to do and how you go about doing it.  If you decide to get one let us know what you think of it.  I have been debating buying one for my wife to join me (and so I have another option to pick from  .)

There are a few places up here where you can get Malibu Kayaks that I am aware of: Cabela's (Lacey,Wa) and AdventuresThroughKayaking (Port Angeles,Wa).  The latter will let you test paddle any of their kayaks.  http://www.atkayaking.com/

There are also Malibu dealers in Longview(WA), Reedsport, and Brookings.  I know nothing about these stores.  I've met the people at ATKayaking .  Good peeps.

You can find the info on the store locator on the Malibu site ... http://www.malibukayaks.com/dealers.asp

-Allen

Yeah, I hit up the Malibu site a couple of days ago and emailed all of the local dealers, from Brookings up to Port Angeles and Coeur d'Alene. One of the places was offering $100 off if I bought a couple of them, which is what a buddy and I are looking to do. If I pick one up, I'll write an indepth review. Anybody else out there that wants to pipe in, please feel free!!

Jingram,

Yeah, Polepole doesn't know about it, but I recently did pick up a couple of Mini-X's for myself, and I feel like I'm fairly "up" on them.  I bought two and not just one cause my favorite thing to do is to take someone along on almost any of my fishing trips, and they were pretty cheap so why not?

Okay, so the short and sweet of it is this:  Shorter and wider boats are slower than longer and narrow boats, and wider boats are more stable than narrow boats.  I'm not aware of any miracles that can defy those general rules, except maybe the hobie's "Mirage Drive" boats, which I personally don't find comfortable to peddle, but that's probably a whole different discussion.  So outside of the "peddle" boats, those rules pretty much hold.

Right.  That said... I'm still gonna tell you that "for what I'm doing with them" (and that's the very important disclaimer), I'm LOVIN' the mini's.  They claim that they're 35#, but you gain about 2# with each hatch that you add.  I guarantee that you aren't going to carry them like a backpack and I'll bet you won't get that far with one hanging from a shoulder strap over your shoulder like they show in the catalog, but they're pretty doggone easy to sling into the back of my Toyota Tacoma.  And HEY!  These are the only kayaks that I've found yet that are designed to stack one on top of the other.  Nope, they don't fit together like two platic cups... more like two cereal bowls in the sink and the bottom one still has a spoon in it.  But with just a tiny amount of flexible foam between them (I'm using two pool noodles) they suddenly stack perfectly!  Again, that's way handy if they travel in the back of a pickup and not on car top racks like most guys do.  Since I don't have my racks with me (long story), it saves me a couple or three hundred more bucks since I can tote them in the pickup bed easily.

Alright, the rest you've probably heard again and again... yep, they are really VERY stable cause they're really wide.  Yep, they're probably the cheapest fishable, off the shelf, new (as in never previously owned) SOT out there.  To put you in the ballpark, I paid $568 for each of mine, including shipping but didn't pay taxes.  I'll fill in details by personal message, if you want.  Yep, they'll float a TON of weight.  Okay, maybe not a ton, but they claim 300-350#.  I weigh in at about 200# and they leave my butt in about 1/8" to maybe 1/2" of water on the top side of my kayaker's seat.  That's a wet ride in my book, but no big deal to me.

So even on flat water they are never going to paddle as quickly as a longer, skinnier kayak.  I'd estimate (total wild-ass ballpark figure) that I can paddle the mini-x at about 2 to 2.5 knots with the same effort that I use to paddle my O.K. P-15 (back in Wa.) at 3 to 3.5 knots.  Not a very big deal if you're not going too far, unless you have to paddle against a 2 knot current!  But in my time paddling around Puget Sound, the straight, and Vancouver Island, I've never had to paddle against more than about a 1.5 knot current.  Yeah, the big currents are out there but you can usually know where they are and don't go there.

Now... here's where I'd steer you AWAY from a mini-x if this applies to you:  if you think that you will have many times that you want to paddle your own yak on big water (because you can many MANY times borrow a different one from guys like Polepole, Zeelander, or certainly me) with the chance of big chop, do yourself the BIG favor and spend a few more bucks on a longer kayak.  By big chop, I'm talking maybe 1.0 foot or taller.  There is NO WAY that the mini is going to slice through chop like some kind of navy cruiser.  What happens is that a wave will come over the bow of a long enough kayak and then spread over the sides before it reaches the cockpit.  With a short boat, you take most waves right in the cockpit and maybe even right in the chest.  I wouldn't have very much fear of being sunk like that in the mini-x, but it's gonna wreak havoc on your forward momentum.  And if you have to paddle even 1/2 mile in such chop, you're going to wish to hell you'd spent maybe two more hundred on a longer boat.  Yeah, not having paddled one, I'd still guess that the P-13 is a good candidate for such a boat, or maybe one like my P-15, or if the budget gets fat somehow maybe one like my Malibu X-Factor.

So there you have it.  That's about as short a report as I can do and still do any bit of justice to the ins and outs of just about any fishing SOT.  So the deal is this:  it's all about what YOU plan to do with that boat once it's yours.  And by all means, like all of these guys will tell you every time.... don't just take my word for it.  PADDLE AS MANY DIFFERENT KAYAKS AS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU BUY.

Fishin-T

Nice write up, Tom.

Where in Oregon do you live?  Sportsman's Warehouse (in Portland and Salem) carry Ocean Kayaks.  I've seen Wilderness Systems Tarpon 120's in a couple of GI Joes.  Next Adventure in Portland carries Ocean Kayak, Hobie, and Emotion.  REI in Portland and Eugene (Bend too, I think) carries Ocean Kayak, but seldom stocks fishing models in the store... that said, you can order them through the web site and have them shipped to the store cheap (or free, i think, just takes a while).

I just got into this a couple years ago, and started with an older model Hobie Outback, then moved on to an Ocean Kayak Big Game, and picked up an OK Prowler 13 for my wife.  Of the boat's I've paddled, I'd rate the Prowler as the best all around craft.  The Outback was stable and the mirage drive made it a trolling machine, but the seating position made my butt go to sleep and it was hard to manage fly line with the pedals.  The Big Game is sort of like a Sprinter work van... huge, roomy, super duper stable, but slow and very heavy.  Still, it is my primary fishing boat and kind of feels like a lounge chair on the water.  Great for fly fishing, and I've used it for crabbing with no issues.

The Prowler is much narrower than either boat, feels tippy initially (but actually has very good secondary stability), and is very agile.  It's faster than the Big Game, about the same as the mirage drive Outback.  I'd be surprised if the Mini-X is more agile than the Prowler 13 (but of course, it would certainly be more stable and easier to manage hauling/moving around.  If I were planning on fishing in places that involved traveling more than a couple miles, I'd look to a boat like this over a Mini-X or Big Game.

Hobies are the most expensive of the bunch, but come with the most standard equipment and it is generally all good (except the paddle, which sucks, but if you have a Hobie you generally only use the paddle for launching and landing).  If I were to buy a third kayak I'd seriously examine the Hobie Revolution.  Big Games and Prowlers are decently equiped, but the seats are not as nice as the Hobie, and they do not include carts, paddles, or any other secondary items.  For a little more money the Ocean Kayak Trident 15 is currently available, and is top of the line in terms of a long-distance and open water fishing kayak.

PolePole currently has a tricked out OK Big Game for sale in the classifieds section for a super cheap price... were I just starting out and looking for a fishing kayak, I'd be buying that boat in a heart beat.

Nice writeup T.

So where are all the fishing reports from Oklahoma?

-Allen

Polepole,

Emmmm... I caught two little crappie and Okie Steve caught a decent little 3# catfish.

Hey!  The water is litterally 85 deg. and more.  The fish just aren't hardly moving right now.  We're hoping to do a lot better this Sept.  I'll post in the "Let's Talk..." forum when I have something.

As far as the discussion on mini-x, we're hoping to float a small river over close to Arkansas that would be a little bit like the Yakima back home.  Might even make it an overnighter.  I'll post right here how the mini's perform.

Fishin-T

Well T nailed... I've got nothing more to say. Nice write up buddy!

Z

BTW the Hobie Maui stacks as well.

Guys, I really appreciate all of your insight and opinions. Obviously this stuff is very subjective and every guy will have their own preference. I knew this coming into it. That being said, your opinions are really helpful. Clearly we will be testing as much as we can. We now have three guys looking to buy at once and so are really hitting up doing as much research as we can. We noticed that REI outlet has OK Prowler 15s on sale. How do these stack up and are any guys running them? What about Wilderness Systems? People love their touring kayaks and I have spent a bit of time in one in Alaska this past spring. How do guys like the Tarpon 120 angler???

Keep your opinions coming boys.... here is our weight breakdown

Me: 6'2" 190lbs
Friend 1: 6'5" 220lbs
Friend 2: 6' 235lbs

If there are other brands that you guys think we should take a look at let us know here!

Rgds,
Jack