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.sunandmooninn.com) 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.

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!