Old Town's Salty PDL 120, is Goose Hummock's best selling pedal-powered kayak designed specifically for the inshore saltwater fisherman. The basic package is a cover all your bases, compact fishing platform at a mid level price point in the pedal drive category of fishing kayaks.
The Boat:
The Salty PDL 120 has been in production since 2020. The Salty is a pedal-powered fishing kayak that is part of OLD TOWNS highly regarded and respected Sportsman line of fishing kayaks.
This series includes a number of different boats- some are electric motor drive, some pedal drive, and some are strictly paddle drive. The Salty PDL was designed with the Cape Cod salt water inshore fisherman in mind.
The hull design is modeled on the super popular Ocean Kayak Malibu( another brand Old Town owns), but incorporates some interesting redesigns and upgrades which turned this into a bona fide fishing machine.
Fast, compact and can deal with some messy water.....
At 12 feet in length, coming in at just over 100 pounds with pedal drive installed, this boat can be managed by one person in decent shape and condition. At 100 pounds, it is far easier to deal with being loaded and unloaded out of a truck bed. If you plan on car topping, you might want to consider a lift assist device like a Thule Hullavator.
Why the Goose is Big on the Salty 120 PDL:
When it came into the store for the first time, we knew the Salty was going to be a " go to" fishing machine for alot of local fisherman.
Because of the rocker design on the hull, the nose will run higher out of the water than most fishing kayaks. How does this translate into increased fishing performance? The Salty can take moderate swells and not completely soak you in the process. The tracking on this boat is really good for this type of design.
We did note that it's a little narrower than most kayaks in the fishing category, but we didn't experience any lack of stability with the narrower design in our on the water testing.
It's essentially a super stable tri hull like design, perhaps like you would see on pontoon boats- as a result, it's very stable and standing was pretty comfortable.
The open deck of the Salty is laid out in a straightforward and usable fashion. You can tell that whoever designed it was a fisherman.
There are abundant storage opportunities built in that will accomodate small coolers, dry bags and the like. There's even one built directly into the top of the pedal drive unit...perfect for keys, cell phones, etc. Storage is important in a fishing kayak because of all the gear we fisherman love to take with us and this boat provides it in abundance.
Among the built ins on this boat are multiple rod holders Old Town already incorporated accessory mounts which means that you don’t have to go through the unerving process of drilling holes in a brand new boat , for many of us , a truly dicey proposition.
The seat is always a make or break in any kayak...if it's not comfortable , you won't use the boat often. The seat in this boat is slightly elevated...this will keep you in a better casting position, extend visibility , keeps you out of any water collecting in the boat, and as mentioned above, pretty comfy. The seat is fully adjustable on a built in sliding track.
Old Town’s trademark PDL Drive provided plenty of juice...even in moderate wind and current. It's easy to pedal 2 mph with out a ton of effort, but if you find you need to get out of Dodge quickly, top speeds of 5 mph are possible.That's fast. The pedaling mechanism is intuitive and can be mastered the first time you use the boat. What is out standing is you can also pedal backwards... truly handy for manuevering and positioning with greater precision.
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