Hi Mark, I'm in the process of rigging my kayak for fishing. I live in Florida and I use a sit-on-top kayak. As far as the pros & cons between kayaks and canoes, it really depends on what you want to use it for. Also, there are pros & cons between sit-on-top and sit inside kayaks; again depending on what it will be used for. My wife and I looked at all of the options and decided that the sit-on-tops suited our needs best. We originally purchased them for snorkeling/freediving (much cheaper in the long run than dive boats). Obviously the SOT design worked best for this. By the time good snorkeling conditions returned my wife was pregnant so we weren't able use them for our intended purpose. Instead we used them for (gasp) paddling around and found out that we enjoyed that just as much. We were still happy with the SOT's for our conditions down here. A canoe would be good for that as well but the kayaks work well in everything from the ocean to the mangroves to the lakes & rivers. Now I'm getting started with rigging them for fishing. All three options would work well for this but the SOT handles our other activities as well. We'll probably get a canoe as well (one day) but it's not necessary for us. So, my advice is assess your needs/interests and get the one that makes the most sense for where you will be paddling. Here are a bunch of links to various resources regarding paddling & fishing:
http://www.kayakfishing.com/ As the name would indicate, a site dedicated to kayak fishing. There are bulletin boards for various regions. http://www.paddling.net/message/showTopics.html?fid=fishing Paddling.net is a great site for all things paddling related. This is a link to the kayak/canoe fishing board. http://www.paddle-fishing.com/index.html A great site for kayak/canoe fishing although it's rather Florida-centric. http://www.capmel.com/data/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=15 Capt. Mel's paddle fishing forums, again Florida-centric, but good information is in there. http://sit-on-topkayaking.com/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro The forums at sit-on-topkayaking. Those should be a good start, I have more links somewhere, e-mail me if you'd like more (many of them are Florida or California oriented). Also, the Waldens look like nice boats. I'd definitely suggest trying out a number of different ones before purchasing. There can be significant differences in handling between the models. I'm pretty big so I went with an Ocean Kayak Drifter. My wife is normal sized and she really liked the Perception Swing. A number of vendors are releasing fishing specific (not fly though) yaks this year (if they haven't already); Wilderness Systems and Ocean Kayak are two that I remember off the top of my head. Hope this helps. Ken Staples [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.snorkelsite.com
