Kayak bass tournament angler Garin Butler has published a detailed walkthrough of his 2026 Hobie Pro Angler 14 360 tournament rig, and the setup doubles as a useful blueprint for any US kayak angler building a road-ready boat for this season's circuit. Butler opened the season with a sixth-place finish out of 37 at Lake Eufaula, Alabama, and the video explains exactly how every piece of the boat is bolted, mounted and powered to get there.
"Today we have a different style video. We're going to do a walk through of my 2026 rig," Butler said. "I know it's April, but I feel like there's never too late to do a walkthrough on a new setup."
First out of the front hatch was a net, and Butler made a pointed case for never leaving the ramp without one. "This net is coming out when I'm fishing a tournament," he said. "I don't care if it's a 12-incher or a 22-incher, this net is coming out." The piece is a carbon-fibre build from Broken Twigs, made from refurbished hockey sticks with a hockey puck pressed in for flotation. "There's many times where I've dropped this in the water and it floats."
The electronics package is a dual-graph stack — a Humminbird Helix 9 and a Garmin 93SV — mounted to a horizontal H-rail across the dashboard. "I use this mainly for live scope. I use the mapping and avionics and all that stuff as well on it, but it's mainly set up for live scope as Humminbird strictly for down image, side image," he said. Crucially, the layout keeps rod clearance. "You still can skip cast, roll cast, all that stuff without your graphs interfering with that."
For propulsion, Butler runs a Newport Vessels NK-300 with the Dugout Bait and Tackle steering triangle mount, and an uncommon button-and-actuator steering setup rather than foot pedals. "Paul Averill and Brian DeHaunte I think are the ones that designed it, but my buddy Hernan Cortez in Wisconsin, he's the one who I sent my motor mount to and he welded everything up and got it set up for that kind of steering," he said. Trim control lives on a cleat rigged behind the BlackPak. "You can raise it, drop it. Super simple. You can do it one-handed."
Tackle storage is centred on a BlackPak 13-by-16 topped with a ShortStack, married together by a third-party "Big Bass Chris" mount that lets the pak open without fouling the front rods. "This setup is like really, really cool because I can still run 10 rods on my BlackPak and be able to utilize all the space."
Power is split across three batteries. A 36-volt 40 amp-hour Newport pack behind the BlackPak runs the motor. A 12-volt 50 amp-hour battery sits in the front hatch, paired with a Tim Percy mounting plate, a Garmin GLS 10 and an FPV power distributor. "That FPV power distributor comes in handy if I want to turn my live scope on, run it or if I want to make a move and turn it off. I can control everything with a touch of a button including each graph separately, live scope and my nav lights." A 12-volt 20 amp-hour Nocqua power bank under the seat handles GoPros, phones and Butler's Turtle Box speaker. "Turn it on, connects instantly and goes. This thing will lift the mood for sure."
The Insta360 camera placement is a small but specific detail kayak anglers will want to study. Butler runs a long USB-C charger from the under-seat battery up to a mount on the live scope pole side. "I think this setup for the Insta360 cam is by far one of the cleanest setups. Like, the angle of top waters or landing fish, it looks so cool."
Mounting was finished without drilling a single new hole in the hull. "I really didn't want to drill a hole in the kayak. So, I just routed the wires above, zip tied it to the bungee so they don't move and it's worked for two years like that perfectly."
Butler's boat isn't the highest-tech rig on the circuit, and he says so plainly. "It is not the most fancy and high-tech one out there, but how I have everything rigged up works perfectly for me. I was able to use this boat for the first time at Lake Eufaula over the weekend and it worked flawlessly. Was able to get sixth place out of 37. So, starting off hot with the new boat."