The Florida shoot was amazing, don’t ever doubt that. But Alaska really blew the doors off what I thought adventure was like. Maybe not the ten hours of flights and airports it took to get there, but from the moment I set foot to ground, I felt deep down that I had come home. A place where I could really breath.

As you can see.. the only problem was… the view was terrible. Awful.. I mean what is it with all these darn trees?

I hooked up with Jim Sammons and Jock Bradley in Seattle and took an Alaskan Airlines FLight out to Ketchican. We hit the ground at about 5 pm alaska time and the sun was still high in the sky. Our host and guide Howard McKim was pretty easy to spot in a crowd.. as he stands about 30 feet tall and weighs about 80 lbs. Howard drove us down to where he keeps his kayaks and normally takes out his tours. Mainly just to show Jim his new ‘yak fishin trailer.

I Think Jim decided he needed one of these in La Jolla. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has one on the way.

No rest for the wicked. We piled in to a little Bush plane and flew out to the amazing, stupendous, absolutely incredible ‘Rocky Bay Lodge’

This is rocky bay from high overhead. This flyover shot of the unassuming barge doesn’t really do justice to the incredible wonderland the Munhovin family has set up here.

The bay they have tucked in to is glassy calm 99% of the time. Even with strong winds out on the ocean only a short paddle away.

Every night they had cold beer waiting on ice and every morning a hearty breakfast. I think we all gained 5 pounds from this trip from gorging on the amazing vittles. Check out the ‘Lounge’. This is one of the best places in the world to tell big fish stories and in our case… drink rums and build new lures to catch bigger ‘buts.

We set out as early as we could every morning (which is about 3:30 in the morning if you want to see a sunrise) and could have caught our limit every single day. It’s hard to describe how increadible the fishing really is here. To quote Jim… “My arms are getting sore… not from paddling, but from catching all these fricken fish.” 

If you look closely you will see something hardly ever seen on Jim’s face… exhaustion. Granted, this is a shot of his 100th halibut. Each one about 20 lbs… You try hauling that much weight 80-200 feet over and over again off the bottom of the ocean!

Jim’s goal on this trip was to catch something in the 100-200 lb range. Sadly I must report that the big ones eluded us. However. Can’t reach all your goals the first time out. Just gives us an excuse to head back. Besides… we ain’t complaining. We caught more fish in one day than I have caught my whole lifetime of fishing.

This is a tiger rockfish. Probably the most incredible looking fish Jim hooked. The striped marking was really stunning.

Ling Cod are tasty, toothy and a wonderful fight to land. The gills have been cut on this one because he just became dinner!

Howard shows off the first Yellow-Eye. This monster makes great eating. They live a very long time- this one is about 70 years old. Not much fight, but the color makes for a great photo. The limit for rockfish in Alaska is three per day, between these and Big black bass, I can’t imagine how anyone could starve in Alaska… they pretty much just jump on your hook!

This one was caught using Shimano’s ‘Butterfly Jig.’ Jim really put the jig through it’s paces and is happy to report that it was a winner with the big fat yellow-eyes

Two big fat yelloweye

This is why they call it a ‘Yellow-eye’… i think.. at least thats what Howard told me.

     

Halibut on the other hand are a pretty hard fish to haul up. Even the smaller ones feel like they weigh a million pounds, and since they are right on the bottom, it’s always a long haul getting em to the surface.

Once you do as soon as their heads are out of the water they thrash like crazy. As you can see.. so do the Ling Cod.

Ling cod are great big toothy critters. They fight hard and take you for an awesome sleigh ride. Even though we came to Alaska for the Halibut. I think we all want to go back to fight the Lings.

Jim rocked the lings and the halibuts with a Shimano ‘Lucanus’ Jig and rig. This lure had no problem catching every single fish Alaska had to offer.

When the fishing got hard, Howard would pass off some of his ‘Secret Bait’ these monster rubbers that, as you can see, fish were so excited about they brought friends.

Finally… out of late nights and a few rums comes our Alaskan experimental lure. The fishing is so good here that they will even jump for three bottlecaps attached to a hook. Shimano has nothing to worry about though… the lure broke after only three fish.. letting a monster get away.

Howard Mckim is an amazing guy. He knows where the fish are and he knows exactly how to catch them. Ling cod is his favorite to catch and eat, and brother.. I can understand why.

Getting the damn things OFF the hook is your biggest issue. Ignore the bloody mess dripping off Jim’s yak… the boy fought a lot of fish.

This man does have one achilles heel though. If the weather starts getting rough and his tiny ship gets tossed.. he can get a little green around the gills. Don’t tell him I told you.

After 14 hours solid of hauling up fish. Howard took us to a spot just off the lodge to show us how to clean a few halibut.. and more importantly.. how to eat it.

Done the right way a 20 lb halibut will yield 4 huge fillets. More than enough to feed 6 hungry dudes.

The highlight of this trip for me though.. the earthshattering moment that made me weak in the knees and want to live in this amazing place forever.. well .. before I show you I gotta tell you a story.

On the flight in, Jock and I made a list of ‘Dream Shots.’ Impossible shots that would never happen in a million years. Things like… bear on the beach on his hind legs roaring at Jim… the two guys hauling a 300 pound salmon shark on to the kayak… An eagle diving only inches away to grab baitfish from Howards waiting hand… and an orca whale breaching only a few feet away from our kayaks…

So.. sometimes you don’t get everything you want… but when a moment like this happens.. you cease to care. No photoshopping here. This happened. I even managed to get the video rolling in time to prove it.

Just before we left, our hosts boiled us up some fresh spot prawn.. just about 6 pounds or so of em.. enough to tide us over on the flight home.

The sea is bountiful!

So we crammed our fat buts back in to the sea plane and headed for our next adventure!

See you on the Ottawa River. 

Will

p.s.

A big thanks to Jock and Jim for taking all the great shots!

 

 

 

 

We were all really excited to be in Florida. After all, it was the reason we’d spent the past 6 months brainstorming, working out logistics and pitching sponsors for the project. Now it was time to play.

 

 

There were 5 of us flying into Fort Myers—Jim Sammons, Will Richardson, Lisa Utronki, Jock Bradley, and myself (Ken Whiting). If you’re reading this, you probably already know that Jim Sammons is a pretty legendary kayak angler with a guiding operation called La Jolla Kayak Fishing. You probably haven’t heard of the rest of our team—so here’s a quick summary. Will is the Director of the film, while Lisa runs the second camera. Jock is fantastic photographer who we’ve worked with on many different projects, and whose pictures are shown here. As for me… I was responsible for conceiving the whole project, but my role in Florida was simple. I was here to do some fishing with some of the best kayak anglers in the world. This, of course, is why we hooked up with local pro kayak angler, Greg Bowdish (www.kayak-fish-florida.com). 

 

 

Immediately after arriving in Fort Myers, we made our way to the Sun and Moon Inn in Matlacha—where we would be based for the next week. Matlacha is a great little waterfront town situated to the North West of Fort Myers. The Sun and Moon Inn (www.sunandmoon.net) is an awesome little Bed & Breakfast that acts as the launching point for Greg Bowdish’s kayak fishing trips. The host of the Sun and Moon is a super guy named Curt, who goes out of his way to make his guest’s trip as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. 

 

 

Curt is also well known for having purple and pink dogs…

 

 

We were in Florida to catch tarpon. Not just any tarpon… big tarpon (if there’s any other kind). Unfortunately, the tarpon really didn’t want to get caught… and the weather wasn’t on our side either. All that meant is that we needed to spend longer days on the water and had to explore lots of different territory.

 

Greg with a nice little Bonita that he caught off the beach at Sanibel Island.

 

I spent a lot of my time trolling along the beaches with a shallow water runner. I had some decent luck along the beaches. I caught a Bonita, a small shark, and jumped my first Tarpon. Of course, the cameras were on Jim and Greg at the time, so we don’t have any shots of it. It was definitely a cool experience. The tarpon hit hard and it took me about 4 or 5 seconds to just get my rod out of the rod holder because it was jammed in so hard. It actually wasn’t until it jumped the first time that the pressure eased a little and I got the rod out. I have trouble estimating how big the tarpon was, because I’m not used to estimating fish in the range of 40 to 100 pounds… But truthfully, it didn’t matter to me. It was a big fish and all I can say is that I was bummed when after the third jump it spat the hook. All I wanted to do after that was hook up again!

 

We weren’t breaking any records with the number of fish we were catching, and so we decided to step things up a notch and headed out to Boca Grande. Although the spot had never been fished from a kayak before (because of all the challenges and dangers involved), we had the right team to make it happen. In Jim and Greg, we had two of the most experienced big game kayak anglers and although I certainly didn’t have the fishing experience that they did, being as comfortable paddling a kayak as I am walking down the street gave me the confidence to offer them back up if they needed it. We also had two support boats that provided safety and a means of moving the kayaks around in the 8 knot tidal current.

There are 3 things that make Boca Grande so challenging, dangerous, and a bad idea in general for kayak anglers. The biggest danger was the number of boats that surrounded us. There were times when we were completely boxed in by boats with fish on their line. The taut fishing lines aren’t such a big issue for the other boats, but for us at water level, the fishing lines were like deadly scythes being swept around at head level. The next biggest danger was the shark issue. Boca Grande is well known for being the Grand Central Station of Florida for aggressive and large Hammerhead and Bull shark. Although most of the boat captains were really cool about us being there (because we came prepared and gave them as much space as we could), a number of them went out of their way to give us friendly warnings about the sharks. The third major hazard at Boca Grande is the tidal current. Most of Florida doesn’t have any significant tidal current, but at Boca Grande, it picked up to about 8 knots, which was enough to create some real waves and make navigating through all the power boats more challenging.

One of the coolest experiences I had all week was during slack tide at Boca Grande. With no current, the tarpon that were sitting at the bottom of the pass came rocketing to the surface to roll (get some air) and then shot straight back down to the bottom, 70 or so feet down. There were times when 20 or 30, 100+ pound tarpon exploded all around me at the same time.

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Greg lands the first tarpon—around 120 pounds of fish.

 

Jim got pulled around by his fish for over 15 minutes before it finally jumped about 5 feet out of the water and spat the hook.

 

Although we didn’t catch a lot of fish in Florida, we did catch some nice ones. We also had a fantastic time. We have to send a huge thanks to Curt at the Sun and Moon Inn and to Greg Bowdish for making our trip truly memorable. You can be sure that we’re going to be heading back down that way soon!

 

On to the next adventure!

 

Ken