Best Fishing Kayak Value? | RS117 Full Review

hey guys welcome to today's video where i'm going to give you a full walk through of what i consider the best fishing kayak on the market dollar for dollar that's a toad brother all right guys so before we jump into today's review i got to tell you that i helped develop this boat but you are going to get my unbiased opinion on how it came out so let's take the boat and go bow to stern and let me walk you through the things i love the things i don't love the things that i change and some of the rigging suggestions that i have for you for the rs-117 so first and foremost i am a huge fan of these fat grip handles they brought that over from the ss series to the fat grip handle i actually like to connect this adjustable drag strap from the folks at rogue and this is really important if you ever flip your kayak now for years i used just the standard regular drag strap i did put an extension loop in there to where it could reach the cockpit you could also use it to stand up and sit down but with this adjustable drag strap you don't have to worry about that and you can adjust it for dragging but you can also adjust the link to the cockpit which makes it easy to use it as a stand up assist strap but more than that and i'll talk about that in the video where i show you how to flip your fishing kayak this adjustable drag strap can actually be a lifesaver when i get done dragging the kite to where i want to go i simply take this cover stick the strap inside right there it's ready to go when i need it but it's out of the way when i don't the first thing you're going to notice on the bonafide rs 117 is that it doesn't have a front hatch what they chose to do instead is to put this skirt over the uh the ford gear well and so the only things that i like to put in this gear well is i actually like to stick my measuring board in there so it's out of the way and i like to stick my soft plastics bag in the front because when you get a big old bag of salt plastics the weight adds up real quick and putting a little bit weight a little bit more weight forward that you can still have easy access to helps balance out the boat now in this ford tank well it has a scupper hole and i see a lot of people plug in the scupper hole please don't do that if you're fishing a river because if you take your nose through a wave or if you're fishing a lake and that nose goes through a wave you're going to fill this front area up and it's not going to be able to drain when we flip the boat over and i show you the hole you'll understand that that scupper is there so that you can run your scupper transducer cord to your power source and mount your graph right here now that's not something that i like to do and i'll talk about that when i get further back on the boat but really the way i like to set this boat up is i put my measuring board off to the side put my bungee i put my soft plastic right there in the middle i put my cover back on strap it down and i am ready to go and then my measuring board is right there using up unused space and it's easy to grab when i need it now there's two different types of paddling configurations that i like to use for this boat it actually comes with a paddle keeper that is built into that same ford hatchwell cover that i was talking about so i like to use a yak attack a roto grip a standard base and a 90 degree offset if i plan on standing a lot that way i can put the paddle off to the side put it in the paddle keeper click it in place that works great when i'm sitting but what's really awesome about it is when i'm standing up it puts the paddle right there where i can grab it when i need it now if i'm fishing a river and i don't plan on standing up a lot i'm a big fan of the double header so i just use the double header off to one side now one thing you have to keep in mind about using the double header on these xl gear tracks is you have to remove the bottom keeper because the track does not fit the keyway does not fit into the track so just simply take that bottom keeper off throw it in your little gear hatch right here and then it'll work perfectly fine i love this thing for being able to have my paddle right where i need it quickly if you're fishing a river where you're going around corners and running into trees and stuff you might want to opt to take this off but for me for flat water fishing or for fishing open rivers the double header from yak attack is a must have not just on the rs 117 but pretty much every fishing kayak that i use these days so coming on back like i mentioned before there is a scupper hole for your transducer that goes to the bottom of the boat and that's because you have this little dry hatch right here now i always like to carry an extra drag strap because a lot of people that i go fishing with don't have one and it's also great to have if you end up needing to tow somebody or to help them portage so i always throw an extra drag strap inside my little hatch here now this hatch is designed to be waterproof and it is promoted by bonafide as waterproof i see a lot of people talking about putting their phone and their keys and their wallet and all that kind of stuff in there i personally wouldn't do that i don't trust anything in the kayak fishing world that says it's dry i don't care if it's got a seal this hinge is kind of loose this seal around here is not always going to be the same depends on how the boat cools and so if you flip the boat over and there's water present there it's going to make it into that hatch so i'm not a fan of using that thing as dry storage i just use it as storage storage you can choose to do it whichever way you want but again i also don't mount my depth finder here i actually mount my depth finder off to the side but i also very rarely use a depth finder with this boat i'll talk about that in just a second so again the only thing that i really add to the boat other than whichever paddle management is i will put a yak attack base right here so that when i'm filming i can put a camera arm up here that sticks back and gets you that forward camera view or that down river camera view and that's probably not something that appeals to most people now coming on back we're going to get into the first thing that i don't like about this boat and it's one of the things that i've given the feedback to bonafide and i'm going to keep giving the feedback to them is i'm a big dude and there's a lot of you guys out there that are big dudes and so the first thing that i hate about this boat when it comes from the factory is they put the hardware facing in i put it back the way it comes from the factory just to show you guys but the first thing i do when i get one of these boats is i take the seat out and i flip this hardware around so that the head is on the inside and the nut is on the outside that way it doesn't dig into your legs the second thing that i don't really love about this boat is the actual seat itself okay there's a weird gap right here that means when you're sitting all the way back you have your butt kind of out here a little bit and the back is the right height um but the configuration is just a little bit weird but i will say this i've come up with a solution and this is another one of those things that i use it on every fishing kayak so it's not a big deal for me but if you buy this bonafide kayak one of the first things that i would tell you to do is to grab a kayak cushion and so the way this thing works is you just throw it on the seat you take your strap bring it around under the frame bring it back through this little keeper right here that keeps it from sliding back bring it around behind the seat arm hook up to this little cam buckle right here put the tag in through there and then all you have to do is cinch that down now it's real simple what that also does is it raises you up a little bit the first thing that you're going to want to do when you get this boat is you're going to want to flip that hardware around like i said but you're also going to want to tighten these straps as tight as you can get them and you're going to want to re-tighten them as often as you can if you're a big angler like i am the number one reason this seat will be uncomfortable for you and i see a lot of smaller anglers complaining about it is they don't get this scoop tight enough so if you leave that loose when you put the seat back in the boat you're actually sitting down in a scoop and you're going to rub on this bar on both sides the tighter you keep that bar the better it's going to be now the seat comes with two different positions there's a low position and there's a high position i'll show you what i don't like about the low position when we get this thing out on the water but i'll try to try to explain it now when you go into the low position i think that you're only able to adequately paddle this boat if you're under six foot two now here is my work around for that these foot braces right here slide down and they actually come off so when i'm in the low position if i'm fishing rough water i actually take the pedals off throw them in my little dry hatch right here and i sit in the low position i actually use the ford bulkhead for bracing and that's where my foot goes so if you're over six foot one six foot two that's a little tip if you're in the low position just take the foot pedals off and brace against the forward bulkhead i'm not exactly sure how tall you can be and still get away with that i think if you're over 6'4 this probably isn't the boat for you and you could probably get away with it right about up to about 6'4 in the low position but i'm going to talk about that in just a second so let me throw my little foot brace back on here whoops and then we'll get to the rest of the boat okay so it's obvious those things are really easy to adjust now i've been in the low position a grand total of about two times in this boat because i am a big fan of the high position for a couple of reasons one it's going to bring me up and back two i can lock this little hook omni clip on the back of the seat frame and so when i stand up my seat back doesn't fall forward when you move the boat to the low position that bungee's really hard to reach so you've got the compounded effect of you're too far forward and you've got less room to stand and the seat back wants to fall down on you so for me i love the high position because i can put my heels all the way back here and i can stand over the top of these scuppers and for a bigger angler having that extra support keeps the deck from flexing now one cool thing that bonafide came up with is this little ridge was put here for a couple of reasons one it was put here for stability and to add a cross brace so when you sit in the seat it doesn't make the boat flex the happy benefit from that and the additional benefit is that when you put a tackle box in here it doesn't slide forward one of the number one reasons you see anglers fall out of fishing kayaks is they stand up something slides forward they move their foot they step on it and out of the boat they go so this little bulkhead right here is really good for that i love the fact that it's got traction pads in it but it's not overdone and meaning you don't have it up in the forward footwell so that when your feet slide back and forth one it wears the traction pad out and two you don't really use it up there it's mostly just for aesthetics so i like the fact that bonafide went simple with just the two traction pads right where you need them now one thing that's not mounted on this boat that i say is a must-have if you're gonna fish open water but i really wouldn't recommend it on this boat in the river is to add an anchor wizard the ankle wizard just slides right into the track and so depending on which paddle configuration i'm using i'm going to use the anchor wizard on the other side but again that's just a nice to have it's not a have to have but a little window weight or the new four or six pound anchor that the folks from anchor wizard just came up with is a perfect compliment to this boat again a nice to have not a have to have the cool thing about this fishing kayak is you really could go fishing with it right off of the showroom floor it's got two built-in flush mount rod holders as you can see here i'm using one of them for my yak attack leveraged landing net but you could also just take your rods drop them right into those flush mount rod holders or you could do like i'm doing over here which i took a yak attack camera pole cut the mount off of the back and i can just stick it right into that flush mount rod holder it allows me to get a really cool over-the-shoulder shot but it also allows me to grab that camera use it as an underwater release camera and hold it out to use for that selfie shot but as i was saying it's also a great way to just drop a rod holder in there speaking of rod holders these dudes right here are actually designed to hold your paddle but since i use a paddle holder and i don't necessarily use this for a paddle keeper like it was designed but again if you buy this thing right off the shelf it's got everything you need maybe not everything you want you do have a built-in paddle keeper but when i'm fishing the rivers and i'm going through overhanging brush and things like that i actually turn these things into rod keepers and just strap my rods down horizontal just like that they're out of the way they're not in my paddle stroke they're right there when i need them but i'm not having to worry about putting extra rod holders on the kayak and i'm not having to worry about my rods getting tangled up in bridges and overhanging trees and things along those lines now one thing that you wouldn't expect to get out of a boat at this price point is the ability to put any of the black packs in there you can use the 13 by 16 which i have in here you can use the 16 by 16 sideways you could use the 13 by 13 if you want to but this is the configuration for the black pack that i set up specifically for my rs-117 so i basically set it up four and aft i got my two hinges on the back and i went with only one latch in the front so when i'm turning around i don't have to fight with the seat to try to get both of them off of there i can keep a ton of gear in here but i am able to use longer handle rods back here in the back like this by raising that rod holder up it's in the high and dry position and that handle doesn't hit on the bottom and if i want to secure it for going around trees i can actually use that tethered hook and it holds everything in place this video is not a black pack video it's just to show you that the black pack works really well in the rs 117 it also comes with a really cool tackle box holder right there so if you didn't have your tackle box under your seat you can stick it right there one of the things that i'm a big fan of is sticking it behind the bungee and against the black pack so when i stand up when the boat wobbles this tackle box doesn't slosh back and forth and make a bunch of noise but they thought about a lot of tackle storage you got the little side pocket right here with tackle storage you've got one on this side on this side of the boat you actually have a built-in nalgene bottle or yeti bottle holder right there that thing also works great for throwing expired plastics and torn up plastics in you could stick some foam in there like the traction pads and hook some spare hooks and things like that it's just a really good well laid out cockpit to where you can have everything where you need it and not a lot of crap that you don't so this boat could be as simple or as complicated as you want so come on back to the back the last thing that i really love about this boat is it has a removable hatch in the back so that if you wanted to take this off put your power pole on here mount a torpedo mount anything like that you have access to do that now to keep the price point low they got rid of the high fancy seat from the ss 127 they got rid of the removable console and but they kept this hatch and they kept the oversized fat grip handles in the back and they didn't put the inserts into the boat like they would with an ss 127 or 107 because you can simply take this off mount your power pole mount your torquito right there i've chosen to keep this boat really simple really clean really easy in a lot of cases i don't even take the black pack on the river i'll take two rod holders horizontal one i'll stick in a flush mount and if i happen to be going under an overhanging bridge or tree limb or something like that i'll just put the rods right between my legs bring you back up front real quick i actually love this little groove right here because if i'm going under a bridge or through some trees i can stick my rod handles underneath here and this little groove just keeps my rods right in the middle keeps them from sliding out they don't extend past the end of the boat and it makes it easy for me to go down the river and navigate through trees and things like that without having to worry about my rod tip getting caught on it and dragging it out of the boat or flipping me in a worst case scenario so guys that's pretty much the layout of my bonafide rs-117 again i'm a little bit biased because i helped design this boat but at the same time i think this fishing kayak is the best fishing kayak on the market dollar for dollar now we're going to pull the gear off this thing flip it upside down and i'm going to show you some of the magic that you can't see which is the whole design that also makes this thing perform really well all right guys so one of the most important things about a fishing kite design is the design of the hull and it's not something we've always talked about in the video so i'm going to make a point to do that moving forward so if you look at the whole of this boat there's a really nice pronounced keel which is going to allow this boat to track really well for a short boat anything under 12 foot in my opinion is starting to get short at 117 means this boat is 11 foot 7 inches so like i said coming on back you're going to see underneath here this is the back of that scrapper that i was talking about you got your two screws there to mount your dev finder mount and you can put your transducer right there it'll fit anything up to about a nine inch transducer so again you're probably not going to be putting structure scan or live target or anything on a boat like this so it's going to accommodate most of your you know your value price point depth finder mounts which is what this boat was designed for but as you notice coming on back that you've got these two pronounced pontoons that go all the way back the length of the boat those two pontoons are going to give you a ton of stability when i get on the water and i start talking about secondary stability versus initial stability when you're in the water the water is going to be hitting about right here which is going to give you a little bit less initial stability so the boat will feel a little tippy to most people but once you realize that when the more you lean the more boat goes in the water and when you hit that chime it tends to stick that's where the secondary stability comes in the balance that you have to find in a design is that the better the lower the initial stability and the better the secondary stability the better balance you can have between speed performance and stability and you accomplish that by doing these chines on the boat design but you still have really good initial stability by the fact that you've got this catamaran style pontoon hull which is also complimented by the fact that there's enough scuppers to really stiffen this boat up but they designed it as such that when that tapers as you're moving through the water if you bring a wave over the bow that tapered scupper is going to help evacuate that water much quicker so you're not going to end up in an unsafe situation if you're running a river or if you're fishing in open water and things tend to get rough come on back to the back and i'll really show you the cool part about this boat as these pontoon holes start to come back together what you end up with is two really pronounced keels in the rear those two keels are going to allow you to have a boat that at slow speed is going to maneuver really well but the faster you paddle it or if you motorize it those two kills are really going to lock that boat down kind of like two fins on the back of an airplane the boat the airplanes have two fins on the back got a lot more stability this does the exact same thing and one of the things that i'm really proud of because i was you know the driving force behind getting companies to do this in the beginning is these sacrificial skid plates in the back initially fishing kites didn't have that anglers grab the front handle they picked the boat up only the back is dragging along the surface and you end up with these holes so first of all you got two kills but you got two sacrificial keel replacement pads right there that's pretty much a walk through of the hull this boat like i said is 11 foot 7 inches it's 33 and a half inches wide it comes in at 77 pounds which sounds like a lot but it's a full 30 pounds lighter than the ss 127 so when i fish out of this boat it feels like i've been running with ankle weights and i took them off but this boat also comes in at 1149 which makes it what i consider the best bang for the buck dollar for dollar for a fishing kayak on the market today but where the rubber meets the road is getting this thing on the water and seeing how it performs so i'm going to flip it over throw the gear back on it get it on the water and give you my real opinion on performance but out there on the water all right guys so let's jump into the on the water portion of this rs-117 you know review overview like i said before i'm a big dude and the seat is plenty comfortable but i highly recommend adding the kayak cushion i also highly recommend flipping those screws the the opposite way of the way that they come from the factory and if you end up getting your boat and it's not that way it's because i convinced bonafide to do it that way to do it right the first time all right so again one of the things about this boat is if you sit there and rock it it feels like it's initially unstable but the reason for that is is that when you're paddling you have more boat up out of the water that's a lower coefficient of friction which is a fancy term for drag which allows the boat to be relatively fast for a short boat now this boat is not a fast boat it's not going to win any speed races and it's not designed for that but the cool thing about it is has really good secondary stability so when you lean you hit that edge really hard okay so if you notice here i've got all my weight out over the side of the boat and the boat is just stuck now that's important when you're sitting in the boat and you want to do things like you know sweep strokes or edge or do things like that for turning especially when it comes to fishing in a river and you want to hit an eddy you want to lean in and edge and turn and pull into that eddy so you can make a presentation so again like i talked about when we were doing the whole review the boat's got a nice keel on the front it's got a pontoon style hole it's a relatively short boat which allows it to be really maneuverable but the faster you go the more the boat digs in what's also cool about the fact that you have those two kills in the back is that when i lean i get a lot of support on that back quarter so i can reach further back and make that long stroke and then really maneuver the boat okay so the boat is very responsive and really sporty when you need it to be but when you get going forward because of that double kill it tends to track better than most boats in its class so the other thing that comes into play and i'll turn it sideways so you can see it is a lot of your modern fishing kayaks have really high back seats and most manufacturers have gone to this thicker foam up on the back so when you're not using the kayak cushion i feel like the seat back is a little too high so it's pushing the pfd up on the top but when i get the kite cushion and i tighten that seat frame up it actually hits me just perfect and when you push off the foot braces and get your butt back the seat is actually really comfortable now this seat is not designed to be a performance seat it's designed to be efficient seat so if it was a performance seat it would be a little bit lower back and that way when you're sitting up and you're paddling it's not anywhere in your way but this boat is designed specifically for fishing so you're not going to be rotating your torso in your paddle you're more going to be pulling with your bottom arm and pushing with your top arm so the seat isn't a factor a lot of rake people think that the seat back is too high and honestly it really is but when you're out there all day fishing and you want that extra support you're really going to appreciate that higher wider seat back and that wider seat frame again all you have to do is add a kayak cushion and this thing is as comfortable as any fishing kite seat on the market now when it comes to reviewing fishing kayaks and one of the reasons that i don't really jump into the really inexpensive boats you know the three 400 boats the sometimes even 500 boats is i firmly believe that if you're gonna fish out of a kayak you need to be able to stand up and to be able to stand up in a fishing kayak to me is the only way i truly classify it as a fishing kayak so if you can't stand up in it and you can't stand up in it relatively easily like so and just pop right up then to me it's not a good fishing kayak so that's why i say that this boat is the best fishing kayak dollar for dollar on the market because you get really good features you get really good stability you've got the ability to put a depth finder on there you've got a scupper that's designed for it the boat's going to paddle really well in the sitting position but it also maneuvers really well when you're in the standing position for keeping that nose pointed where you need to cast and it also you know responds really well but i'm going to go back to what i talked about with stability before let me spin the boat back around so i can show you guys what i'm saying now with that really high secondary stability and a little bit lower initial stability when you first stand up if you do this it's going to feel a little tippy but what you want to do is put the weight on one foot and go kind of light on the other foot so i highly recommend going heavy on the foot that's opposite where you're casting that way if i cast over to that shoreline and i set the hook but the lure breaks i've already got that leg solid now if i go to the opposite side and i'm wrecking the presentation and i set the hook and i miss the fish or the line breaks i've got to go all the way through the arc of stability to this side and most likely i'm going swimming out the other side so from a stability standpoint when it comes to standing up if you put the weight on one foot generally opposite the direction you're casting you're really going to lock that boat in it's going to want to push back and it's going to support your weight and what's cool about that is you can change the foot that you've got weight on throughout the course of the day now the other reason that that's really cool is when i start paddling whichever way i make the paddle stroke i can put weight on the opposite foot and get the boat to turn that direction because when i take those two kills if i push this kill in the water it's going to make the boat turn the opposite direction so you can pretty much steer the boat with your feet and that really comes into play if i'm throwing like a buzz bait a crank bait a spinner bait or anything that's got some drag to it i can actually throw that thing put my rod tip out there and i can steer the boat with my feet and let the lure pull me along and i almost never even need to pick up the paddle so overall i think the rs-117 is a great boat i personally think it's the best value on the market dollar for dollar when it comes to what you get is what you pay for so let's run back through the cons one more time if you're a tall angler and you're in the high position seat your knees might be a little bit too high okay for me i can push those foot pedals all the way forward and i'm good to go in the high position in the low position i pretty much have to take the foot pedals off and put my feet right against the forward part of the cockpit and it's still okay for me and i can get away with it again i very rarely if ever fish in the low position even when i'm river fishing the one thing that i really love about this boat is it's again one of those things that you could take it off of the showroom floor straight to the water you need a rod you need a pfd and you need lures and you're ready and a paddle and you're ready to fish but you can also uprig it to depth finders and motors and power poles and all of those other things that really make this boat again in my opinion the best boat on the market dollar for dollar all right guys so there's my overview of the rs-117 fishing kayak from the folks at bonafide this boat finds a place in my arsenal for quick trips for grab-and-go and for river trips now they do have a river boat that's coming down the road and it's going to be interesting to see if that riverboat replaces this as my primary riverboat because to be honest with you i love this boat i love how light it is i love how easy it is to get in and out of the water and i love how responsive it is when it comes to getting out there so you got the paddle park if you don't if you don't want to add a yak attack accessory you can put them your paddle right on the side and strap it down you can use the double header you can use the roto grip like i talked about before but pretty much this boat comes with everything you need to get out there and enjoy the water guys i hope you enjoy this overview of the rs-117 y'all do me a favor leave a comment in the comment section below tell me what you think about this review and tell me what other fishing kayaks in this price range that you'd like to see me review in the next video

Channel: Chad Hoover

Views: 33,675

Keywords: fishing, kayak fishing, kayakbassfishing, kayak bass fishing, Best fishing kayak, Fishing kayak review, Kayak fishing reviews, BONAFIDE Kayak RS117, RS117 Kayak Review, Best fishing kayak value, Chad Hoover Kayak Fishing, #kayakfishing, #kayakbassfishing, #fishing

Id: TrL240qzapo

Length: 27min 28sec (1648 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022