I had the opportunity to travel to Spring Hill Kansas to meet up with Stony Floyd. A shout out to Eco Fishing Shop for getting us connected with each other. Stony has moved up from a regional to a national pro staff with old town kayaks. He fishes out of an old town 120 PDL pro especially when he is on skinnier water like rivers. He is planning to fish a tournament on the Susquehanna River. Looking forward to using Wilder Side wheels to get into a remote access point. I’ll b

I was really happy to see Hobie show up to the ICAST ‘26 tradeshow with a full compliment of their fishing kayaks on display! https://youtube.com/shorts/wgBE-xZ7SYM?si=uB0b-FW5KriDJKku

We experimented last year with the idea of spreading legs out a bit and adding balloon tires to get bouyant leverage. That worked spectacularly well. So then we thought about adding another slot to give the wheels a chance to actually engage the water and provide more active stability during drifting or trolling. Presently, the Freedom Fisher is a promising prototype that is undergoing real world testing across a variety of kayak designs. Once we have more test results and

Fernando called in January inquiring about a solution for the Bonafide XTR130. He was either going with the Freedom Launcher or going the trailer route. After weeks of delibration, he went our way and has never looked back. Fernando made comments like, "this looks OEM". And "I like it!". He fishes tournaments regularly in and around Augusta, Georgia. He has tricked out his kayak and is so happy he has a set of wheels up to the task on this beast of a kayak. Fernando real

I'll start with a recent phone call: Ken from Florida. Sixty five years old. Tired of wrestling his Old Town 106MK out of the surf, so he downsized to a Native Slayer 10 LTE. Hates the hard-to-deploy landing gear. Hates having to wade in the surt and lift to deploy the floating wheels. Found us and ordered right away. Thinks now he maybe didn't need to downsize kayaks if he'd known of us sooner. Back to 3 year in the salt. Will Akers installed his Freedom Launcher on h

David Dear is a martial arts instructor and an avid fisherman. He has several social media channels and I follow him on YouTube. David is also a Brand Ambassador for Wilder Side and he has helped our brand by advocating for the Freedom Launcher on SM. David paid full price for his Freedom Launcher. His endorsement is genuine as it comes. I'm sharing two recent landing videos that David published. In the first video, David drops the left leg first. That creates some asyme

Thanks, David Dear!! I stopped by David's to take a look at the FluxJet for the first time. We worked to evaluate how to do the install and got the Gorilla brackets mounted. Then I sent him the rest of the kit. Here was step one of the process: I'm so thankful for customer's who have partnered with Wilder Side to fit up to over 49 different kayak hull designs. Pictures, videos, personal visits like this mean that we stand a great chance to make it fit right the first time

Larry from Virginia, summer of 2025: Tried out the product. Three weeks after setting it up, he said, “If I had put a Freedom Launcher on my PA 12, I wouldn’t have needed to switch to my Hobie Outback!” This Monday, June 21, 2026: Had a chat with Ken from Florida, a new customer. Once he realized he could fit a Freedom Launcher on his Native Slayer 10 LTE, he explained why he switched from his Old Town MK 106. It was too much hassle to install landing gear and load it into hi

Every once in a while I get an email that reminds me exactly why we’re doing this. I got one of those from Dustin in Missouri last month and I wanted to share it with you. I’m not going to add anything… I’ll just let you read it. From Dustin (Missouri): “Just wanted update my thoughts on your freedom launcher although weather not ideal here yet i wanted take it out now that freedom launcher was installed and give it a try. Id say that if anyone was on the fence to make the

It's a joy to receive feedback from customers whether good or bad. That way I know they are using the gear and learning what it can do. It's been really amazing because I get really positive feedback on a very consistent basis!! Here are some pictures of Christine's kayak. She's from my home state of Minnesota. What a sweet looking rig! This is what Christine had to say. " I'm Chris from Minnesota. I'm not sure if you remember me or not but I thought I'd give you picture

Tim Everest is from Corpus Christi Texas. He fishes from his Hobie PA 14 and is loving his new Freedom Launcher landing gear. A customer's Hobie PA 14 on Freedom Launcher landing gear. Gross weight of 225 lb. "Makes launching and recovery a breeze!". Here is what Tim has to say about his new landing gear, " I held my review until I had fully tested the Freedom Launcher, and I can confidently say it has exceeded my expectations. I’ve used it across a variety of salt water c

This has been an exciting week of orders. Yet another Hobie Lynx customer! And a Nucanoe Unlimited customer who really wanted to talk...

Scott Beattie is a fly fishing enthusiast and just an all around great person. I had the great opportunity to spend time with Scott and...

Note: If this doesn't sound like me, that's because I'm using an IA assistant to write the article. Man it can get fluffy. READER...

Please consider forwarding this to a friend!! I had a chance to go to a Hobie dealer and measure the Lynx for a future mounting group...

Based on customer feedback, we are pleased to announce that we are adding a new Freedom Launcher lineup to our Catalog. The Adventure...

I was asked by a prospective customer how the Freedom Launcher manages over rough and grooved surfaces. I've had great success...

After a morning of fishing and before parting ways, Mike offered to share his thoughts about the difference the Freedom Launcher makes...

The video is now live of my first recording of a Native Titan X launch. Mike gave me a great tour of some of his favorite fishing spots. ...

I met our first Native Titan X 10.5 customer, Mike Shannon, on Friday October 4th. He took me on a journey from one of his many favorite...