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My First Canoe, Old Town Sportsman 119

Joined
Jul 30, 2025
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Location
South Louisiana
As some of you guys may know, I'm new to canoes, but not to paddling, I've been kayaking for years, but I'm at a point in my life where kayaks don't work for me anymore. That said, I really don't want to stop paddling and fishing from micro-craft, I enjoy it too much. Enter the humble canoe, the solution to my problem. On my wife's suggestion, I found and purchased a slightly used Old Town Sportsman 119. I read a little about it, and I know it's not the best solo boat out there, but it was in budget and only an hour away so I went for it.

I used some of my kayak stuff to rig it out for the initial lake run and figured I assess everything and make changes from there. Here's the initial rigging.

First she got a good bath, then a rub down with 303 Protectant. (Please excuse my sweat on everything, it was 90° and about 60% humidity. 🥵)

Next I dropped in my fishing box from my kayak.
OTS119 Fishing Box.jpg

I added a 1/4" Amsteel stern line with a slip ring.
OTS119 Stern Line.jpg
OTS119 Full View.jpg
Continued in the next post...

Rusty
 
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I added 1/4" Amsteel bow line with a float. I also added my GoPro on the front thwart rail.
OTS119 Bow Rig.jpg


The box dropped in pretty good.
OTS119 Seat & Stern.jpg


I have a few things I definitely want to do to it after the initial paddle.

First I want to change the seat. The stock seat is comfortable for an hour or so, then it VERY not. It locks your hips into position and won't let you shift at all. I'm eyeing an Ed's Canoe set up or probably do something custom myself. I spend all day/night in my boat at times, it has to be comfortable.

I want to lace the boat. My stuff was sliding around all over the place this weekend every time I'd catch a boat wake. I'm use to my stuff being lashed down on my kayak. I'll probably never need float bags, but I'll be camping and fishing all the time in it and I'll need to secure my gear.

I'm going to add a removable thwart with an accessory rail closer to me. The one that's on there is too far forward to be really useful. It'll probably get the camera and possibly a transducer arm if I decide to add a fish finder.

I think that's about it for now, I'm sure the plan with change and alter as I go, but that's it for now. I'll document all my changes in this thread.

Rusty
 
Welcome, ROB!
First thing I want to say is - make no apologies for your canoe. Up until a few years ago, I would have assumed that the Discovery 119 is a very limiting hull. But then I follwed a guy who was in one going down a stretch of class 2+ (some say 3) here. And yeah, he was kneeling with a single blade - but he got through the whole stretch of several serious rapids in control and dry.

It may be slow and heavy compared to our favorite canoes, but it's a competent pocket solo, and a very useful boat. It's what you do with it that matters.

Looks like you're off to a good start. I like Ed's contoured bench seats. I find them quite comfortable. Unless you plan to kneel all the time, you should consider a foot bar or foot pegs.
 
Welcome, ROB!
First thing I want to say is - make no apologies for your canoe. Up until a few years ago, I would have assumed that the Discovery 119 is a very limiting hull. But then I follwed a guy who was in one going down a stretch of class 2+ (some say 3) here. And yeah, he was kneeling with a single blade - but he got through the whole stretch of several serious rapids in control and dry.

It may be slow and heavy compared to our favorite canoes, but it's a competent pocket solo, and a very useful boat. It's what you do with it that matters.

Looks like you're off to a good start. I like Ed's contoured bench seats. I find them quite comfortable. Unless you plan to kneel all the time, you should consider a foot bar or foot pegs.


Thanks for the warm welcome Steve. I'm honestly really happy with my canoe after last weekend, of course I don't know any better either. I've rented tandems a couple of times, but this past weekend was by far the most I've ever paddled a canoe. I've spent countless hours in a pirouge in my youth, but that's a different animal entirely, although, it's also paddled kneeling. That's as close as I've ever been to actually canoeing.

It handles better and is much faster than any kayak I've had, I've always had big kayaks that get blown around a lot though. My wife was a little upset this weekend, hehe, she's always been able to leave me in her wake. She's got a really light SOT 10' kayak and she doesn't carry any gear, so it's maybe half of it's load capacity and she can make it sing with a double blade. I was just using my typical kayak stroke and rhythm in the canoe and she couldn't keep up at all. It's going to make a fine fishing vessel for me and will probably never see class III rapids. 😁 I don't think we even have any class I runs down here, lazy rivers, bayous and lakes will be the life for this little boat.

Since my discovery is the Sportsman it has kayak style foot rests in it already. Currently there's no option to kneel the way the seat is designed. I'm a little up in the air about the seat, I'm gonna let that one simmer. I do have a few things on the way to add that I think will help. Most of it is to mimic my fishing set up on my kayak, mainly cockpit storage. I am ditching the idea of the removable thwart, I don't have that much track stuff I want to add once I started thinking about it, I'm just adding a couple of small tracks to the gunnels for my paddle and camera. I'm toying with the idea of using small tracks and eyelets to facilitate my anchor setup up, but it's just an idea at this point. Those could also serve as light mounts fore and aft, I will be going out at night. The plan is to add a little here and there until it does what I need it to do. (y)
 
I will be especially interested in how you do the anchor setup. I've been considering the same for one of my solo canoes that I do most of my fishing in.
 
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