Echo 14.0

I love this boat. It is my play boat. With a large cockpit, it's easy to get in and out of the boat. When the skeg is down, it feel like a 17 footer, when the skeg is up it turns like a 10 footer.

It's too big of a hole for a skirt, but rain gear fixes that problem. I have taken it camping on rivers with lots of logs, and was able to load it with a tent and other supplies.

It's durable and a great boat to have in your fleet. It's my beater boat, when I don't know what the river will have in store for me, I grab this boat.

This is a 30-day followup to my previous post below. The Echo continues to be an outstanding kayak for flat water applications. I've had it in a variety of lakes and ponds and it serves me quite well. I can store three fishing poles in the front section of the kayak and a tackle box, backback and safety pack in the cockpit immediately behind the seat without having to put anything in the dry storage cavity. One thing to note is the advertised 50lb. weight is pretty stretched. I'd say it's more like 75 pounds and at 14 foot long, it's a bit ackward to muscle up on the truck. However, I use the Yakima boat loader to get it up by myself on my truck topper which makes it a much easier task. If I didn't have that nifty device I'd be a hurtin'.

After extensive research into the many rec kayaks out there I ended up buying the Dagger Echo 14.0. It's a bit longer than my target of 11-12' however, I'm glad I went for the additional 2 ft. I had to come to the realization that most of my kayaking will be on flat water or slow moving rivers. This kayak tracks very well with the drop down rudder and is quite faster than I've ever been in a kayak before. It is very stable and the seat has all the adjustments I was looking for on a kayak. My back is the first to go on me and if I can keep my back comfortable, I can easily double my float time. The large cockpit also allows for my ocassional squirming around, seat adjusting, etc. The cockpit is pretty large at about 55" long. This cockpit size allows me to easily insert a couple of fishing poles into the front cavity with very little imact on my imediate working space. Plus, one additional feature of the cockpit is the large accessible space immediately behind the seat. There is no rim to interfere with placing a small cooler, tackle box or dry bag. Of course this is in addition to the huge dry storage cavity in the stern. Overall I think I'm pretty well pleased with this 14.0 Echo. One other thing to note is that it is stated to be 50 lbs. yet, it carries more like 55 or more. So, I bought one of those little wheelie tripods things and it really made the difference.