How To Get Your Kids To Enjoy Fishing

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April 1, 2013

Photo: James Smedley — How To Get Your Kids To Enjoy Fishing

Before having children, my wife and I spent just about every weekend exploring lakes and rivers by boat or canoe. Simply satisfying our angling habit had been demanding enough, but launching onto the stormy seas of parenthood created the sort of change and challenge that really rocked the boat. Thirteen-hour days on the water were suddenly no longer an option.

Even so, a young family doesn’t mean your rods and reels have to collect dust in the garage. Instil a passion for fishing in your young children and be rewarded with fun family excursions for years to come. Our girls are now in their mid-teens with infinitely more important distractions than fishing, but we still manage to spend time together on the water catching fish and having fun. As a parent, you can’t ask for much more than that. Create a life-long passion for fishing and nurture your angler from the cradle to the boat with these hard-earned pearls of advice.

Never Too Young

Armed with a properly fitted PFD, a child is never too young to get out on the water. “I was about two years old when I started fishing with my dad,” says Gord Ellis, an outdoor writer, fisherman and father of two. “My boys were barely walking when they’d join us in the boat.” Ellis adds that they didn’t do much fishing at first, but being on the water became second nature to them and they get excited for each and every fishing trip now.

A Rod of Their Own

A small spinning reel and three-foot rod is a great starter unit. Stay away from commercial kids-specific rod and reel combos that are more flash than function, can be frustrating to use and prone to breaking. Hand-me-down spinning reels paired with ice fishing rods were a solution for my girls. Like me, you’ll learn the hard way that pre-schoolers often simply let go of their fishing rods when they’re distracted. During the early stages of rod wielding, tying a string from the boat to the rod is a wise precaution. Ellis notes that his kids had a better experience with higher-quality gear and recognized quality early on. “By age six the boys started eyeing up my best jigging rods,” he says. Not until you’re older, Junior!

Choose Your Weapon

Like most adults, I was reluctant to let my daughters choose their own lures because I felt more qualified to select a presentation that would help them catch fish. I was quickly cured of this conceit when my three-year-old insisted on hooking her jig with the strangest looking soft plastic bait in my tackle box. While my wife and I used live minnows, my daughter worked a monstrosity called a “twin tailed skirted grub.” After she caught three walleye to our zero, I vowed never to doubt my daughters’ angling instincts. I still make general suggestions but I open my tackle box and let my girls choose their own lures. Often, I’m surprised and enlightened as to what works.

Fish Where There’s Fish, Dummy

Children like catching fish more than fishing so go for the sure thing whenever possible. While hard-core anglers enjoy the search, youngsters are much happier casting off a point or into a pool at the base of rapids and experiencing instant gratification. Appreciating the subtleties of finding fish in challenging waters comes later.

Warm and Dry

Weather often doesn’t cooperate and an uncomfortable kid will not be receptive to the joys of angling. On the flipside, kids are surprisingly ambivalent to foul weather when they’re prepared for it. First on the list for angler Jamie Robinson is warm clothing and quality raingear for his son and daughter.

“Thinking back, I’m surprised at some of the miserable weather we’ve been out in,” he says adding that when the kids are warm and dry there’s no complaining. Living in Northern Ontario, Robinson errs on the side of caution for his excursions, packing hats, mittens and warm jackets even in summer. “It’s nothing to see us in July in snow suits in the boat,” he jokes.

Bring Distractions

Even at the best fishing spots the bite is not always on and “I’m bored” can become an unpleasant soundtrack for the day. Robinson always brings snacks and books to occupy his kids during slow periods in the boat but draws the line at video games and electronics—kids get enough of that at home. It’s easier to keep excitable children entertained while fishing from shore than within the cramped quarters of a canoe as more distractions are at hand. For my girls, hot weather equals swimming, even if the fish are biting. Often, I’m pleasantly surprised that the walleye continue to bite in spite of the shrieking and thrashing limbs.

Pull Their Weight

While it’s tempting for parents to do everything ourselves, when kids assist with the duties that surround the trip they have an investment in the outing. As pre-schoolers, my daughters would pack their own snacks and help catch minnows and leeches for bait. Their experience has evolved to the point that my oldest can now back the boat and trailer into the water for me and my youngest can clean and fillet fish. Not only has involving them made them feel like an integral part of the adventure, but now they’re confident, capable and a big help.

Go One on One

With the whole family on board, a small craft can get cramped and hectic. The one-child-to-one-parent dynamic provides a great learning environment for kids and more time with a line in the water for parents. Young anglers love the undivided attention and mom or dad will have fewer snags and tangles to deal with. One-on-one provides the perfect opportunity to teach essentials like safe casting practices. Hint: Kids should always announce their casts.

Learn When to Pull the Plug

Don’t let children push you around with early requests to leave but learn to recognise when your child has had enough. Better to have a shortened day on the water than imprint a bad experience. Whenever we couldn’t convince our daughters that boating and fishing was the most fun they could be having, we would head to shore, consistent with our pledge never to force fishing.

While nurturing young anglers takes adaptation and even sacrifice, for parents who love angling and the outdoors, the investment is worthwhile, to be repaid with years of rewarding family adventures.

An avid angler and camper, James Smedley’s life revolves around the outdoors. He has earned more than 30 U.S. and Canadian national awards for writing and photography.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

No Man’s Land: Paddler Fights For The Right To Paddle

Stories

By

Kenneth Aaron

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April 1, 2013

When Phil Brown set out on a two-day canoe trip in the heart of the Adirondacks in 2009, he thought it might make a good story. What he got instead was a three-year legal battle that ultimately upheld the public’s right to make that journey by boat, even though it cuts through private property.

No man’s land: Paddler fights for the right to paddle

The decision, issued by a state judge at the end of February, sheds a little light on the murky topic of waterway navigability in the United States. If the ruling stands, other paddlers in New York may be emboldened to challenge routes marked as private, and landowners may think twice before blocking access.

Brown is editor of the Adirondack Explorer, a magazine that covers the environment and recreation in New York’s six-million-acre Adirondack Park. As part of a route between Little Tupper Lake and Lake Lila in the state’s Whitney Wilderness, Brown paddled along a remote stretch including three smaller waterways.

The owners of the land intersected by those waterways had hung no trespassing signs and cables to deter paddlers. Brown could have taken a mile-long detour across state-owned land to avoid those waters, but didn’t.

“I had done my research and had come to the conclusion that this waterway was likely navigable and therefore open to the public,” says Brown, who wrote an article called Testing the Legal Waters based on his trip.

When the landowners sued him for trespass they contended that the waterway—big enough for a canoe or kayak but little else—was too small for commercial use, an historic method of determining navigability in the United States.

Brown disagreed with that assessment. So did New York officials, who joined Brown in the case. Justice Richard T. Aulisi agreed: “Practical utility for travel or transport,” he wrote, are valid measures of navigability. And making that ruling on such a small waterway makes it clear that recreation rights apply to even the smallest craft.

Technically, Aulisi’s ruling applies only to the waterway involved in the case, as navigability is determined on a case-by-case basis. But other courts may look to Aulisi’s decision as a guide if future cases are filed, says John Caffry, Brown’s lawyer.

Attorney Neil Woodworth says the ruling is good news for paddlers across the state. If the ruling stands, “a fair number of paddlers will begin to try waterways where there had been posted signs and barbed wire,” he adds.

While state officials celebrated the ruling as a victory for the public’s right to access natural resources, they urged paddlers to be cautious. “The case does not mean that every waterway in the Adirondacks is now open to paddlers, nor does it mean that no trespassing signs on waterways can now be routinely ignored,” a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation wrote in an email.

Cover of Canoeroots Magazine Early Summer 2013 issue This article was first published in the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Paddling into no man’s land. | Feature photo: Susan Bibeau/Adirondack Explorer

Kinship In An Unbounded Land

By

James Raffan

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April 1, 2013

There’s a temptation to think that we somehow got from the era of explorers and voyageurs to modern canoeing with very little activity in between.

In truth, there was at least a century of prospectors, surveyors, clergy and gentleman and lady adventurers who pioneered routes and left cairns and journals that beguiled hardcore canoe trippers then and now. Names like Low, Bell Selwyn, Macoun, McConnell, Richardson, Dawson and Keele are still very much a part of the ongoing conversation about canoe tripping.

Woman and little girl sitting in bow of red canoe.

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Kinship in an unbounded land

That conversation continued at this year’s Wilderness Canoe Symposium. One of the voices buried in the Saturday afternoon program was Fred “Skip” Pessl who stood up and said, “I’ve been on one canoe trip in my life. And it didn’t end well.”

And with that, he shared a memoir of his 1955 trip down the Dubawnt River with Arthur Moffatt. Along with four other college students, they followed routes pioneered in the 1890s by Geological Survey prospector Joseph Burr Tyrrell.

The leader of Pessl’s trip, 32-year-old Arthur Moffatt, died on that trip.

After publication of Moffatt’s journal and the macabre story in Sports Illustrated in 1959, the only public airing of the trip was a compelling and controversial 1996 book called Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic by Pessl’s trip mate and fellow survivor, George Grinnell.

Seventeen years after the publication of Grinnell’s account and 58 years after the actual journey, Pessl told the symposium audience that he is determined to augment Grinnell’s account with his own version of the story.

On his journey, J.B. Tyrrell built a cairn in the headwaters of the Dubawnt, leaving a note in a jar and a flag to mark the spot. From that time on, trips that followed would stop and add their notes to the jar—including the 1955 Moffatt trip—leaving a multi-layered experiential record of the echoes of history in a very particular wilderness location.

Retracing Canoe Routes Of Old On The Eastmain River In Quebec

On Tyrrell’s trail this past summer, Manitoba paddler Brian Johnston stopped at the cairn. The jar and notes had suffered. Some—including Tyrrell’s original from 1893 and Moffatt’s from 1955—were illegible in visible light. Others detail the on-the-spot musings of parades of paddlers, also inspired by the original expedition from the Geological Survey. Johnston scanned the notes, refilled the jar with facsimiles and archived the originals.

What binds J.B. Tyrrell’s original 1890s report, George Grinnell’s haunting Death on the Barrens, Skip Pessl’s memoir and Johnston’s forthcoming On Top of a Boulder: Notes from Tyrrell’s Cairn, is the canoe and what Johnston refers to as “kinship in an unbounded land.” Without the prospectors, this kinship would not exist—there would be no jar filled with inspired notes tucked away inside a cairn built 120 years ago.

Cover of the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine This article was first published in the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Lost messages in a bottle. | Feature photo: Brian Johnston

Those (Im)Perfect Days

Stories

By

Larry Rice

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April 1, 2013

Photo: David Lee — Those (Im)Perfect Days

Last summer, I happened across a magazine article, lyrically penned and lavishly illustrated, extolling a perfect day of living large in the great outdoors. To my delight, the piece centered on a weekend canoe trip in a region of northwoodsy lakes and rivers I knew well. Digging deeper into the story, it soon became apparent that this was definitely unlike any paddling getaway that I’ve ever been on.

In the accompanying dreamy photographs, the GQ-ready paddler, complete with Brad Pitt’s dashing good looks and a perfect two days worth of stubble, was seated ramrod straight, sans PFD, in the stern of a classic wood-stripper canoe. The boat, with its classic lines and warm-hued natural wood finish, was stunning. Nearly as stunning as the statuesque bow paddler, an übersexy blonde attired in a sports bra and knockout tights, again, no PFD, who I swear I’ve seen gracing the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.

In between the lavish images of the two beautiful models who just happened to be sitting in a canoe, the article waxed poetically about the glorious morning sun casting itself over the sky-blue waters and the sweet-smelling wilderness air. It rambled on about the sensual, hypnotic motion of the sleek canoe gliding over the mirror-calm surface, the enchanting yodeling of a pair of courting loons and the picture-perfect campsite under tall white pines awaiting day’s end.

Well, jolly good for Brad and Gisele, I say. For the rest of us Average Joe and Jane Bagadonuts who canoe in the real world instead of Never Never Land, all this pabulum was a bit much.

In 35 years of dinking around in canoes, I’ve had my share of memorable days on the water. Though I have to admit, not one of them was ever shared with a supermodel and not a single person has ever mistaken me or any of my paddling buddies for Brad Pitt.

Some of my most vivid remembrances from canoe trips past have not been of days when life was blissful, beautiful and perfect, but rather those imperfect days. Days when canoeing was more about fearsome storms, chilling capsizes and portages from hell.

Sadly to say, my canoeing-related misadventures are not isolated events, but I’m glad of them all. Even now, years later, these wayward recollections still make me grin in a puckered-brow, I-can’t-believe-this-happened-to-me kind of way.

By now I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never have an angel as a paddling partner, other than my wife, and I’ve been told I look a lot more like Larry David than any GQ coverboy.

Truth be told, canoeing as often as I do, I’m bound to have more of those indelible imperfect days. After all, shit happens, which only makes me appreciate it even more when everything does go right. Besides, for the paddlers I know, mishaps make better stories.

Larry Rice’s most recent imperfect day involved a sand-blasting, tent-flattening, all-night windstorm in the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande in Big Bend, Texas.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Why Highlighting Successful River Restoration Projects Is So Important

By

Michael Mechan

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April 1, 2013

View down the Chicago River, lined up skyscrapers — The Chicago River is just one example of a successful river restoration project in North America.

My dad collects antique canoe cups. They’re these beautiful, hand-carved noggins, shaped from the burl of a tree—usually a maple. Natives and voyageurs tucked the toggles under their belts, letting the cups dangle from their waists so they were at hand when thirst struck. They would dip the cups in the water, drinking straight from the lake or river. Imagine that.

Hand-carved canoe cups sitting on a table. — Now that’s using your noggin. | Photo: Michael Mechan

Any number of articles that cross my desk remind me that this is no longer possible. Voyageurs had to contend with beaver fever, but not industrial heavy metals or pesticide runoff.

My dad’s collection sits on display in my parents’ home. I often admire the workmanship when I visit. I also envy the simpler times when it was safe to use the cups now relegated to a shelf of artifacts. In my kit, these cups have been replaced by Nalgenes, charcoal and ceramic filters, plastic hose contraptions and chemical drops.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all canoe tripping gear and accessories ]

Still, I can’t help but be optimistic. Headlines suggest the ruin of our waterways, but I think that’s just as much a problem with reporting as it is with the environment. There are many tremendous successes in improving access and quality of our waterways.

Organizations like Oregon’s Willamette River Water Trail and the Lake Tahoe Water Trail, featured in this issue’s 13 Amazing Adventures for 2013, have created fantastic resources to get people on the water. Use it, fall in love with it, invest in it, so the theory goes. So far so good for these and many similar initiatives.

Problem is, we don’t talk about them enough. The first three pages of Google search results for “most improved rivers” reveal coverage of the same single U.K. report. Nothing from North America. Where are the stories about the 62 dams that were removed across the U.S. in the past year? They brought the total number of removals in the past 20 years to well over 800.

None of this is to say we don’t all need to do our part to continue fighting the good fight. There are big environmental problems out there and awareness is an important first stop on the road to recovery. You may have heard the Colorado River just topped American Rivers’ annual Most Endangered Rivers List released in April. It was awarded this status because of the burden placed upon it by the 40 million people that rely on it for drinking water and irrigation.

The story less told is that this list isn’t a death sentence. Quite the opposite, actually. The Chicago River, for example, was a receptacle for untreated sewage until 2011 when it showed up on the list. Later that year, the problem was solved in response to public action spurred in large part by the publicity brought on by the list.

[ Further reading: How Are Our Rivers Being Protected By Law? ]

Shouting our successes from the rooftops (and riverbanks) instills hope as well as provides models of success from which to build upon. I may never use a canoe cup risk-free, but I believe restoration projects continue to grow and that there are more amazing waterways out there than I will ever get to paddle in my lifetime.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots Magazine‘s Early Summer 2013 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.

This is editor Michael Mechan’s final issue of Canoeroots. He plans on dedicating more time to exploring some of these reclaimed waterways.

Now that’s using your noggin. | Photo: Michael Mechan

Necky Elias Kayak Review

By

Paddling Magazine Staff

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March 27, 2013

Photo: Virginia Marshall — Necky Elias kayak

A review of the Necky Elias sea kayak by Adventure Kayak magazine.

At last, an Eliza for bigger folks. Unless you’ve been kayaking in a cave for the past six years, you’ve probably heard of Necky’s accolade-winning women’s specific kayak, or watched petite friends paddling these pretty boats. Watched and wondered, perhaps, “Hey, what about me?”

Well, big fella, meet Elias. Necky calls it “an agile, playful and responsive touring kayak” that is “extremely efficient for its size.” Sound familiar? By borrowing design cues from the Eliza—shallow V hull, semi-hard chines and high, buoyant ends—and then stretching the hull three inches and boosting volume, Necky has delivered a nimble performer that’s well matched to its little sister…

WATCH A VIDEO REVIEW OF THE NECKY ELIAS SEA KAYAK

Necky Elias Specs

Length: 15 ft  6 in

Width: 22.25 in

Weight: 54 lbs

Price: $1,599 US / $1,679 CAD

www.neckykayaks.com

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. To continue reading the full review, download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Tumblehome: Life After Death for Peterborough Canoes

Stories

By

James Raffan

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March 27, 2013

This editorial originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

A fabulous new book called The Canadian Canoe Company and the Early Peterborough Canoe Factories (Cover to Cover Press, 2011) has got me thinking about reincarnation.

According to author Ken Brown, canoe building in Peterborough, Ontario, effectively died in the early 1960s with the Canadian Canoe Company ceasing operations in October 1961 and the Peterborough Canoe Company declaring bankruptcy soon after. But the presence of this book and a quick cruise on the World Wide Web indicates that the products of these venerable canoe companies are still very much on people’s minds.

The demise of industrial canoe building in Peterborough was real enough. Companies that had skillfully grown from an emerging 19th century cottage and craft activity into seven or eight canoe-building factories with robust domestic and international markets, struggled after WWII. Aluminum and fiberglass building techniques—innovations honed in wartime aircraft manufacturing— lent themselves naturally to canoe building. But tooling up for new materials and new building techniques was expensive. And training or retraining a skilled woodworking labor force to make canoes out of plastic or metal was also costly. It was only a matter of time before the wooden canoe companies floundered.

Yet Peterborough thrived through nearly a hundred years of uncommon industrial success. Ken Brown tells us that in a country bordering three oceans, in 1930 a quarter of the 778 Canadians involved in the building of small boats were employed in the land- locked center of the continent by Peterborough area firms, generating a third of the annual $2 million sales in this area of the economy.

After WWII, this tapered back and, after the closure of the Peterborough companies, passed to the skilled hands of later generations of small builders and hobbyists who continue to keep the tradition vibrant.

Today, you can buy Peterborough canoes at auction. Reprints of old catalogues are available for sale in hard and soft cover. The iconic company logos are available as decals for the growing corps of builders and rebuilders from Pacific to Atlantic and Arctic to Caribbean who still love Peterborough shapes in their shops.

And then there are the T-shirts and calendars, and the advertisers who for the past 50 years have freely employed canoe imagery. Selling charcoal, beer, milk or maxipads with canoe imagery cashes in on the fact that from explorers, surveyors, itinerant clergy, police and fur traders to modern day hunters, anglers and recreational paddlers, Peterborough canoes have been involved in just about every aspect of life beyond the fringe in North America. They are part of Canada’s heritage and, as Ken Brown reminds us, part of the history of the U.S., U.K. and countries even farther afield. Advertisers know that consumers are drawn to canoe imagery because this vessel—the Peterborough canoe in particular—is part of who we are.

James Raffan is thinking of coming back as an explorer, writer and executive director of The Canadian Canoe Museum.

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012.

Easy Dock Landing Technique

Skills

By

Marty Tannahill

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March 21, 2013

Photo: Marty Tannahill — Marty Tannahill

This technique article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

Gracefully bringing your canoe to rest adjacent to a dock or deep rocky shoreline is the aim of a well-executed landing. In this position, paddlers can more conveniently exit the boat, stabilizing themselves by using the dock or shoreline for support.

The ideal landing is completed with the canoe under constant motion, stopping it snuggly against the dock. To make this happen, approach a fixed target on the dock in a straight line, roughly 45 degrees to the landing. As the boat nears the landing point, the stern paddler initiates the turn by using a draw or pry. If the landing is on the stern person’s paddling side, he or she should use a draw. The stern person should use a pry to initiate the turn if the landing is on the opposite side. 

Immediately after the stern paddler initiates, the bow paddler reciprocates with a complementary stroke. If the stern paddler uses a draw, the bow paddler can assist with a draw or bow cut. If the stern paddler uses a pry, the bow paddler should choose from a pry, bow jam, crossbow draw or crossbow cut. Just before reaching the target, both paddlers provide well-timed reverse strokes usually followed by some subtle draws or pries to stop the canoe at the intended spot.

Practice the timing of your strokes. Initiating the maneuver too soon will leave you too far from your target. However, waiting too long could result in a collision with the dock.

As you develop this skill, communication between paddlers is important, especially when changing partners. Plan the landing out verbally before you begin. It’s best to start at slow speeds so you don’t ram the dock or damage the canoe. Increase the speed only after you can competently complete the maneuver. Try slightly different approach angles to see what works better for you and your partner. Knowing how your boat responds to the strokes is important as all canoes maneuver differently.

Marty Tannahill is a Master Canoe Instructor with the Ontario Recreational Canoeing and Kayaking Association. When he’s not paddling you’ll find him fly-fishing Ontario’s remote rivers.

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012.

Handline Kayak Fishing Technique

Skills

By

Paddling Magazine Staff

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March 20, 2013

This kayak technique article on how to catch fish from your sea kayak on a handline was originally published in Adventure Kayak magazine.

Handlines offer fishing without the fuss. A simple plastic spool or wooden shuttle wrapped with 60 to 100 meters of monofilament line, a handline avoids the storage hassles and maintenance  woes of a rod and reel.

Handlines are dirt cheap to buy (5 to 10 dollars for a 4- to 6-inch spool) and damned easy to make yourself—use a jigsaw to cut 1-inch plywood into an I-shape with one end roughly the width of your grip, and wrap the line around a shaft of 5 to 6 inches.

Handlines are best used for trolling or jigging. Save casting for the cottage; without the mechanical advantage of a rod to assist your toss, you’re more likely to capsize than catch a fish. Kayaks are the perfect vehicle for trolling since most paddlers tour at the ideal pace for spoons and diving Rapalas. Whatever method or lure you use, heavy line (15- to 20-pound test) is necessary since handlines don’t offer the line-saving flex and drag capabilities of a rod and reel.

For hands-free trolling, attach the handline spool to your kayak’s deck line with an 18-inch length of bungee. Play out as much line as you want and tuck the spool under your deck bungees. When you get a bite, the spool will be pulled off your deck and the bungee will dampen the initial jerk, set the lure and keep the spool within easy reach for the retrieve.

Tip: to avoid snags and shredded Gore-Tex, replace troublesome treble hooks with single hooks.

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Summer/Fall 2009. Download our freeiPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Q&A with Justine Curgenven

By

Paddling Magazine Staff

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March 20, 2013

Photo: Courtesy Justine Curgenven — Round-the-World paddler Sarah Outen with Curgenven (R).

If you’re fond of kayaking, you’ve probably seen at least one of Justine Curgenven’s award-winning This is the Sea films. Maybe, like me, you’ve happily watched one of her five TITS DVDs from start to finish without so much as a popcorn or pee break (an impressive feat given TITS 5, released this year, is up to a whopping three hours). For many, the Welsh filmmaker’s videos aren’t just entertainment—they’re the inspiration to plan a long expedition, learn to surf, teach a friend to paddle, or make kayaking a part of day-to-day life.

Adventure Kayak caught up with Curgenven to reflect on 10 years of TITS, and look at how the sea kayak film has evolved over the past decade. To read the full interview, as featured in the premiere issue of our new monthly magazine, Paddling This Month, click here.