I just purchased a new 8 foot wooden pram for fly fishing lakes and ponds. Not all the lakes I fish has an easy launch set up. I was wondering what other here use to get their canoe, kyak, or other small boat from the parking area to the lake besides carrying it (ouch!). I have looked at some canoe and kyak dollies and I was wondering if anyone had good or bad luck with certain models and which ones you would recommend.
This is something I built to move a jon boat around, it worked well in the limited amount of use it has received. For rougher usage I would upgrade the wheels and think about attaching the side arms with heavy hinges and padding them, then use a binder strap to pull them snug. I placed the center beam at the balance point on the boat and used a rope to pull it like a wagon.
Watch for a sale on wheels at Harbor Freight. You can get 10" pneumatic tires with wheels for about $5 each when they are on sale, which is about every other month.
I made a dolly for my kayak out of aluminum angle iron and a set of wheels from surpluscenter.com like this https://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?catname=&qty=1&item=1-2853 I simply cut the pieces to length, drilled and bolted it together and itâs worked great for the past four years. I glued a piece of carpet on the part of the dolly that the kayak rests on to prevent scratching up the kayak. You could use metal for the frame that holds the wheels and and wood for the âuprightsâ that position the boat. You want to make sure that you get wheels that are large enough to handle uneven terrain without getting stuck or hung up on a small rock. Then , simply have a T-Handle on a short ropeattached to the front of the boat and you can walk away with it like a suitcase. There are tons of different wheels offered from surpluscenter.com and theyâre great folks to do business with. Just one optionâŚ