Flashlight mount

The disadvantage of mounting a fixed light someplace on your kayak is that it would only illuminate in the direction your kayak is pointing, like vehicle headlights, but there are many situations when paddling in the dark when you would want to check what is off to one side or the other of your kayak.  The advantage of a headlamp is that it points where ever you're looking.  If you don't like a headlamp, one compromise would be a rest for a handheld spotlight which would hold the spotlight pointing straight ahead, but would allow you to grab the spotlight out of its rest and point it off to the side. This option probably wouldn't work real well with a paddle kayak, because you wouldn't be able to paddle while holding the spotlight. A better compromise would be a mount for a spotlight which would allow you to point the spotlight from one side to the other so you could reach up and point the spotlight off to one side when necessary, and then resume paddling.

This thread reminds me that we used to whitewater kayak the Alberton Gorge on the Clark Fork River west of Missoula in the dark with headlamps.  As you ran a rapid, the foam from holes and breaking waves would light up in your headlamp.  It was particularly exciting when surfing a big fast wave.  The foam on top of the water would go zipping by you as you surfed, and spray would fly up off the nose of your kayak and flash in the light from your headlamp.  On a clear night with a full moon, the river would be lit up quite brightly by the moonlight, but when you floated into a shadow it would suddenly be very dark.  Overall, an overcast or hazy night with a full moon was better, because the light coming through the clouds would provide diffuse light to the whole canyon, without any sharp shadows.

When I was going backwards... (rowing). I used headlamps for all my night trolling. I went through the collection of 3-AA battery headlamps, and they were fair. Then I went to the Cree headlamps advertised at 81,600 lumens...
Well I don't know about the advertised lumens but they are bright. I like the rechargeable 18650 batteries they come with too. The headlamp seems to last about 2-3 hours on high. Just don't spend much time looking at your buddy with that thing on.
Cheers, Tom

Ditto on the headlamp idea.   I am a bit of a flashlight collector and have a good number of different LED Headlamps.   There are a huge variety of headlamps that run on 1 or 2 of the 18650 batteries but they never seem to last the 5 or 6 hours of night work I often get stuck performing in the rain.    You can put together a Cree bicycle headlamp with headband / helmet adapter and a higher capacity "four 18650 batteries" that will easily endure wet kayaking conditions for a pretty low price.  Just need some simple waterproofing the connection between the two.

I find the use of my headlamp is very limited to landing fish and warding off tribal seiners. Estimated time of use is probably 30-45 minutes use in 4 - 6 hours of fishing. We carry an extra pair of charged batteries and have made 3 consecutive nights without changing batteries. My buddy and I find being out on the water at night quiet and peaceful in comparison to the day crowd.
Now, if signalling is needed we figure up goes the pocket rocket and smoke (old habits) when recovery is close at hand and the light from the headlamp would confirm the target (us).
The only time we have been approached by enforcement was when some people sitting in their hot tub made a drunk call to report there were lights out there. Our lights caught their attention because we were landing a decent size king and I was helping my buddy. I guess we were looking around a lot... A lot was going on.
One season we used the little suction cup battery powered anchor lights. TOTAL FAILURE. The anchor light was too dim to provide any working light and cast a shadow over the rail where we needed it. I think it is in the experiment bin with our other great ideas for gear.
Cheers, Tom

Since Shoeman and the other yak-gear homies are sleeping. 

http://www.yak-gear.com/shop/kayak-canoe-lighting-visibility-safety/Kayak-LED-Flood-Light-Fishing-Hunting-Cree-LuminaLED-Lumina-LED

Does Yak Gear give a discount to NWKA?