Bonafide SS127 Fishing Kayak - Still Worth Buying in 2021?

hey guys so in today's video i want to take an in-depth look at the bonafide ss 127 kayak and this is probably going to be the first of a series of videos where i'm taking a look at different kayaks those of you that have been around the channel for a while know that in the spring and the summer we have a group of family and friends that really enjoy taking kayak camping type trips on local rivers in the hill country and so i want to continue to do that but also i want to start incorporating some more inshore type saltwater fishing trips as well and doing a little bit more fishing on the rivers in addition to that so for the last three or four years that we've been doing these kayaking trips we've been running the future beach angler 144 kayaks it's kind of a big box store entry level maybe an intermediate level kayak and they've really served us well over the years we've made several stretches of the guadalupe we've paddled the san marcos river we've paddled the medina river the south llano our family actually did a trip in colorado and new mexico and we hauled all five of our kayaks up there and paddled the animos and did an overnight trip there they have really served us well we've definitely gotten our money's worth but i'm kind of starting to take a look at some different models and getting kind of the itch to upgrade to more of a premium and more of a fishing type kayak so in this first video i want to take a look at the specs and the features and a little bit of the performance metrics of the bonafide ss 127 and then we'll compare that to other kayaks uh as well so i was able to borrow from my friend les and his daughter katie the bonafide ss127 less paddles of the jackson cusa so i was able to take a look at it and we'll do kind of an in-depth look at that that kayak as well mary and kevin have wilderness systems kayaks so i hope to get a look at those colette actually has a brooklyn kayak so i may get to paddle that got another friend of mine that has diablo kayak and so maybe able to get my hands on that one as well alright but today we are going to take a look at the bonafide ss127 so after paddling around for a while you can definitely tell that this kayak was designed by and for fishermen and that's kind of its primary purpose but it's surprisingly nimble in certain situations as well alright so let's talk first about the specs of the kayak it is 12 feet 7 inches long it's 33 and three quarter inches wide and then the weight capacity of the kayak is 475 pounds it it's hard sometimes to get an actual weight on a kayak but bona fide on their website lists three weights actually and they call it an honest weight and so the hole by itself is 69 pounds the kayak without the seat so all of the other components the lid all of the hardware all of that kind of thing is 85 pounds and then once you add the seat it is 94 pounds i think that's kind of in the middle range of a premium fishing type kayak so now let's talk about some of the design features of the kayak and kind of what they wanted to accomplish and whether or not they hit the mark on some of those things designers at bonafide wanted to create a kayak that met certain performance metrics without sacrificing on other performance metrics and typically you're going to have a trade-off from one to the other for example they wanted to create a boat that was very stable but that wasn't excessively wide and it was still maneuverable they wanted to create a boat that tracked well without sacrificing again that maneuverability or the speed of the kayak and so i think they hit the mark on most of those things they may have missed the mark on a certain others and we'll talk about that as we go through this and begin to talk a little bit more about the performance metrics but as far as the actual hull design they call it a hybrid catamaran design and if you take a look at the bottom of the kayak the first thing that you'll notice is a pretty pronounced center keel and that center keel is designed to really cut through the water and it's also a fairly vertical standoff and what that does is it puts water pressure on both sides of the of the keel and so that is going to allow it to really ground in the water and as you paddle it's going to keep it from walking from side to side so that's designed to help it really track well and then it quickly transitions from that center keel and to more of an outer pontoon type system and so that's where they really wanted to gain the stability of the boat and so the buoyancy is outside on those pontoons and they really did a remarkable job for a 33 and a half a little over 33 and a half inch uh boat in achieving stability the pontoon type system continues on towards the back and where it terminates and then at the back they also added just a little bit more of a center keel it's not all the way down and that was designed to aid in the tracking as well so let's talk about the actual performance of the boat and probably the number one performance metric that they hit the nail on the head in is the stability again for a 33 and a half 33 and three quarter inch boat they were able to get the buoyancy on the outside and that's a super stable platform they actually talk about two levels of stability so you have the initial they rounded the edges a little bit so you can still achieve the maneuverability that you want to and lean into your turns and make the paddle strokes that you want and still achieve some maneuverability but the secondary stability is where they really talk about uh achieving the stability and so as you're sitting in the chair as you're standing up fishing as you get your hook set you can really feel the stable platform of the kayak and so that's one area where i felt like they nailed it it's an extremely stable platform the goal was to create stability without sacrificing and without compromising on the width of the boat and still maintaining the look and the feel of a kayak and i think they accomplished that quite well all right so the other thing we talked about was that center keel design and the tracking i actually watched several reviews online and people talked about how poorly the the uh the kayak tracked and people mentioned that it didn't track well while you were paddling and that it wanted to walk and then when you stopped paddling it wanted to drift one way or the other when i first started paddling the kayak i didn't notice any kind of walking i felt like it did a pretty good job of as i paddled it tracked fairly straight it didn't want to walk back and forth i think a little bit of that has to do with how the seat is set up and how you have it trimmed out and where the weight of and balance of the kayak is honestly the couple of people that i saw that had reviewed it by their own admission were a little bit larger people i think maybe they had the seat in the back position or maybe had had it weighted and so they weren't getting the benefit of that center keel down in the water and so they were talking about how it walks now i will say that as soon as i stop paddling the back end of the kayak wanted to drift whatever the opposite direction of my last stroke was i think it is enough of a legitimate problem that bonafide actually created a solution for it in the form of flex wings that they sell on their site as a separate edition and i'll talk about that as we go through but i did put those flex wings on and it made a big difference in the tracking of the kayak now they also wanted to create tracking without sacrificing maneuverability we talked about how they were able to achieve the stability and the maneuverability as well i found that as i was paddling and i made my sweeping paddle strokes or if i wanted to make turns and again this is on open water it it was very responsive it was very maneuverable i would say it was kind of average to above average on maneuverability i mentioned the flex wings earlier and so i actually bought some flex wings to put on less this kayak and i put those on there they fit actually underneath the keel guards and what it does is designed to ground the back end of the boat so that when you're paddling again it doesn't walk but also when you stop paddling it continues to glide straight forward and i found it worked remarkably well in that regard however it did come at the expense of some maneuverability of the boat now one thing that i haven't tried that i think would work well as as well is either a skeg type system or a rudder and they do make a rudder for it i haven't had a chance to test that but i would think a rudder would be the ideal solution to be able to get the tracking that you're looking for uh without sacrificing the maneuverability and probably improve the maneuverability if you got that rudder to steer you one direction to the other all right so as far as speed goes on the kayak i didn't really have any way to test the actual speed of it i just paddled in a straight line i think as i paddled i would say it was average to above average on the speed it certainly was an exceptional speed but considering the size of the boat i think they did a more than adequate job of maintaining being able to maintain speed uh relative to the stability and the maneuverability of the boat all right so i mentioned that stability was probably the number one performance metrics of the bonafide ss127 and i would say that that's followed closely by the comfort metric it's an extremely comfortable kayak i really enjoy the seat in it there's three positions front to back that you can put the kayak in in the low position but you can also raise it into a high system it's going to help with comfort in your leg position it's going to assist with being able to stand up in the kayak and so i really like the design of the seat system there i found it extremely comfortable we've talked about the specs of the kayak and we've talked about the whole design and the whole geometry and the performance metrics of the kayak but let's talk about some of the design features on the top that are going to add to the fishability the comfort and the enjoyment of the kayak itself and i'm going to kind of go through this list of some of my favorite aspects it's not by no means all-inclusive but just some of the things that i really like about this kayak and especially compared to some of the other ones that i've paddled i think the first one that we've kind of already mentioned is going to be the comfort it's extremely comfortable the seat in it and so i'm not going to spend a whole lot more time on that i think the second thing that we'll talk about is the open cockpit design of the kayak and so as i'm fishing i know a lot of kayaks kind of have a molded in almost a console or something in the front or cup holders or that kind of thing and while that's kind of a personal preference i really like the open design of the cockpit of the bonafide ss127 there's plenty of room to stand i can kind of walk around in a little bit now you're not going to walk around a lot but i can move my feet around i can shuffle i can turn around i can stage rods right in the center if i want to one thing i didn't mention on the seat design that i'll talk about later is it has a jump drawer that fits underneath the seat and molded into that junk drawer or some slots where you can put the butt of your rod in and then the front hatch itself has grooves in it that allow you to stick your rods in and hold them in place and keep them separated kind of along those lines and kind of staging the rods that we talked about there's also in the front or a couple of channels on either side and then a paddle strap and allows you to stick your paddle in the front and then lay it down across your seat your paddle is always ready whether you're standing or whether you're sitting and so you can have easy access to it but those channels along the side also run underneath that strap and what that allows you to do is slide your rod tips underneath it and it keeps them protected one of the biggest challenges that we run into on our river trips is it seems like we always certainly have broken or lost our fair share of rods as the current sometimes takes you up underneath uh blown down trees or bushes or other things those rod tips can get caught in there and again we've lost or broken a lot of rods so having those channels keeps the rod tips protected you can bring your rod straight back and then it sits down there's a little channel that sits in you can use your paddle strap to lash your rod down and keep it protected or to keep it staged as we talked about before so one of the really unique designs of the hatch lid on the bonafide ss 127 is that it is has latches on either side and so you can actually open it and hinge it from the front or you can hinge it from the rear and what this allows you to do is by opening it from the front and raising it in it gives you direct access into the hall for if you have a let's say you have a backup paddle that you want to store in there it's got a nice large opening so you can slide your paddles in there you can also slide your rods in there or as you're traveling if you want to store them underneath it underneath the hole to keep them protected it allows direct access into into the hole you can also open it from the other side as you're on the water in the seat if you want to walk up and need to grab something out of it it opens from the other side so you're not having to reach over the lid if it were to only open from the front so i really really like the design of that i like the large opening of it of course there's a nice gasket around it so it stays waterproof so that you don't have to worry about anything within the hole getting wet i already mentioned the under seat storage or the junk drawer that's in there i think that is a really well thought out thing it sits on a track so that you can actually slide it in and out from underneath the seat you want to put your lures in there you can keep your pliers your fish gripper again it's a junk drawer so any number of things that you want to put in there i just think that's a really well thought out design all right so the other thing that i really like about the bonafide is the number of gear tracks that it's got so the great thing about gear tracks is they really allow you to to make your kayak versatile and to make it custom for yourself and the way that you like to fish so if you have electronics if you want to run a fish finder you can mount those on there you can put a cup holder you can put rod holders you can put camera arms and camera gear so you want to mount those and so there's gear tracks in the front that run across kind of the front and the center of the kayak on either side you have them towards the front that run along the rails in the side of the kayak you have them kind of to the side of you and behind and so there's any number of places that you can add whatever options that you want to for gear tracks one of the things that our family and friends really like to do is take overnight kayaking camping trips and so the underhole storage of this boat is allows for your sleep system for your cook systems for any number of things that you want to take on that trip that you don't need access to immediately on the water that you want to store under the hole things that you want to keep dry there's plenty of storage space for that so on the other side of the kayak is the rear tank well and the kayaks that i've been using have had kind of a front hatch and a rear hatch and this one only has the the front storage or the front hatch to access the whole storage but it's got a really big and deep tank weld in the back and so behind the seat for things like a milk crate if you want to use a milk crate with rod holders for fishing for coolers if you want to carry your coolers in the back so i thought i really would have preferred having another hatch access or hole access in the back but i think i really prefer having that tank well storage in the back so anything that i may need access to more than in the hole and still have uh plenty of storage or plenty of places on the boat for those all right so a couple of other things that i didn't mention that i really think are well thought out is uh number one is the the foam decking and that serves a couple of different purposes number one is it allows you to have a little bit better traction so one thing is you're standing up your kayak and the kayak gets wet it makes it a little bit slippery if you're standing on plastic and so having that is going to allow for a little bit better traction it's also going to allow for a little bit cooler so if you're standing barefooted a lot of times in the sun that plastic can actually get hot and then i think the third thing that it does and probably probably the most important is as you're maneuvering as you have different things that you're you know different baits and you're changing those baits out or your pliers or anything that you might drop in the floor it's going to dampen the noise that might spook fish so when you're fishing a lot of times those fish are really sensitive to banging or loud noises on the side of the boat and so that is going to dampen the noise and is a really nice feature to have on any kayak the thing that i haven't mentioned is the tripod that's in the front so it's a dry tripod storage system it's actually a removable storage system that you can lift out what a lot of people will do on that is they'll actually put their mount their fish finder their electronics to the front and then they'll put their battery in their cables and actually mount their transducer to the bottom of it they can latch that in and then when if they're staying overnight somewhere or at a hotel or traveling they can remove that put it in the cab of the truck to keep it safe it also adds to the versatility of the kayak so you can actually purchase a second or third tripod and put other things in it so if you want to have one set up for your fishing with all of your electronics on there you can put that in if you're making a river trip and you don't need that but you need dry storage for your phone or your keys or any of those type of things you can have a second one already outfitted and just slide it in and put it into place i know there are some third-party manufacturers that make trolling motor mounts so you can run a trolling motor directly down into that area okay so let's talk about some of the things that are not necessarily good not necessarily bad we talked about the weight of the kayak i don't necessarily consider that um to be extremely heavy although at 95 94 pounds with the seat that's kind of getting on the heavy side again it's not something that you're probably going to pick up and throw over your car by yourself it's probably not something you're going to portage by yourself i've got a dolly system that i built from other kayaks that i think would work well for it if you're looking for an extremely light kayak this is probably not the one for you but in terms of fishing kayaks i wouldn't say it's necessarily on the heavy side either all right so one of the things that some people might consider shortcoming are there no flush mount vertical rod holders or really no vertical rod holders at all we mentioned that there's plenty of places to keep your rods horizontally on the boat which i think is a great thing i'm not really that concerned about this kayak not having any kind of vertical rod holders i'll probably run some sort of milk crate and whatever kayak that i end up with and that hat is going to have a couple or three for whatever different rod holders only thing i can think of for vertical rod holders i might want to have one in the front so that if i'm i land a fish and then i want to set my rod down in a rod holder while i take it off the hook or take it out of the net or hold it up for a picture or talk about it in the video i've got a place to set my rod again that's probably something that i could stage in front of me laying horizontally but again it's something that you can add in the future uh through the gear tracks or another mounting option okay so i'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up with maybe a couple of shortcomings and the things that i wish and hope that they improve on this the number one is i'm going to say that there's no pedal drive option right now i'm not really in the market for a pedal drive boat it's really not in the budget there are options for adding trolling motors you can add it to uh the bow you can add to the stern and again as i mentioned you can add it through that dry pod port there are different manufacturers that make mounts for that but at this point they don't make a pedal drive option i could see in the future if i really get serious about kayak fishing that pedal drive option would be a nice nice to have um so hopefully it's something they can add in the future and i'm not relegated to selling this boat in order to purchase one that has that so the other thing that i've already mentioned is the tracking of the boat while i'm not going to say it's it poorly tracks because i think it actually does track really well while you're actually paddling but stock from the factory it does have a tendency to want to drift one way or the other when you stop paddling and i think that is a little bit of a design flaw it is nice that they came out with the flex wings to mitigate that but again that comes at the expense of maneuverability in my opinion they do have a i think it's 170 rudder system that you can add to it to again mitigate that and that would be a serious consideration if i was going to opt for the bonafide cac so let's wrap it up i think overall the bonafide ss127 is the most well thought out best designed kayaks for specifically for fishing make no mistake it is primarily a fishing kayak but i think it's got the maneuverability to handle some of the light river stuff that we do without any problems katie has taken hers on the river multiple times and it seems to handle it fairly well i look forward to getting the opportunity to maybe paddle the bonafide ss 127 on the river myself and get a good judge on how it handles the river but for the most part i think it's going to do anything that we need to do just fine again i hope to be able to paddle multiple kayaks and do some comparison type stuff i've already paddled the jackson coosa but i really like the concept and layout design and the performance of the bonafide i have to say without a doubt it will be a serious contender when it comes to time to make a buying decision so i'd be curious to know what you think if you have a bonafide ss127 tell me the things you like or dislike about it if you don't have one what are your thoughts so leave a comment down in the comment section below if you haven't already be sure to hit that subscribe button i will be reviewing hopefully some of the other kayaks that i've mentioned and so if you want to see those be sure to hit that subscribe button otherwise we hope you'll join us over on our website and discussion forum at texasbowhunter.com if you haven't ever been over there be sure to go check us out we've got a great group of community members that really like to talk everything outdoors including hunting fishing bow hunting of course and kayaking saltwater fishing all that kind of thing so we look forward to seeing you up there if not maybe i'll see you out on the water thank you for joining me

Channel: Michael Middleton TBH

Views: 9,184

Keywords: self filmed, TexasBowhunter.com, TBH Creative Media, Michael Middleton, Mathews Archery, Traverse, bowhunting, archery, bow, Vertix, Wasp Archery, Cinnamon Creek Archery, Brush to Bay Outfitters, hunting, wild boar, wild hog, Texas, whitetail, V3, Prima, slow motion, 240fps, HyperSmooth

Id: rugdMghdA1w

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021