FLIP Your Fishing Kayak | DEEP WATER Re-Entry

Hey guys, I'm Chad Hoover. Welcome to today's video where I'm going to show you how to flip a fishing kayak. Well, actually more importantly, I'm going to show you how to flip a fishing kayak back over and get back in it. That's a tow brother. Golly. All right. So listen, if you fish out of a kayak, it is inevitable that at some point you're going to potentially end up in the water. So this is a drill that I highly recommend that you do. Now, I have stripped down my fishing gear for the purpose of demonstrating this video, because I'm not risking losing some of my precious fishing gear to show you knuckleheads how to get back in a kayak. But I would also recommend trying this with some dummy gear, if you can, specifically an old fishing rod or something like that to show how much drag it creates when you've got a fishing rod in a vertical rod holder or in a rod holder that's mounted to your boat or something along those lines. But what I'm going to do today is I'm going to demonstrate to you how after you flip your fishing kayak, two pieces of gear, or at least one piece of gear that you should have on your boat and how to use it to flip your kayak back over, especially modern sit on top kayaks that have a whole bunch of crap on them. So here we go. All right. So for the purpose of this demonstration, I'm going to go ahead and stow my paddle, which probably wouldn't happen in a scenario where you flipped inadvertently, but I'll show you what to do once I get in the water. So without further ado, let's get to flipping. Okay. First and foremost, you just flipped your fishing kayak. The number one thing that you want to do is remain calm. You want to grab your PFD, pull it down because most of us fat boys wear it loose. And you want to go ahead and cinch down your bottom straps so that it doesn't float up. And it's actually assisting you. If your PFD is up in your face and you're holding it with your arms, you're not going to be able to do what you need to do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hand my hand over, hand my way to the front of my boat. The reason for that is I always keep a drag strap on all of my fishing kayaks. And this particular instance, I have the ADS, the adjustable drag strap from the folks at Rogue. The reason that this strap is so awesome is I can simply take it off of the front handle and I'm going to hand over, hand my way down the side of the boat. Again, especially if there's current, you do not want to lose contact with your boat. Your boat and your PFD are life at this point. So what you want to do is you want to take the loop. You want to go through the handle of your boat, take the handle and go back through the loop. Now I've got the adjustable drag strap set to where it is the perfect link to reach my cockpit. What I'm going to do in this scenario is I'm going to expose the buckle. I'm going to press down on it and I'm going to make it not quite as long as I can, but as long as I can to where I can get it up on top of the boat. I'm going to take the handle and I'm going to throw it to the other side. That's going to hold my strap. Now I'm going to hand over, hand my way back around the boat to get to the other side. This is where the whole bunch of fishing gear comes into play. Now again, if at any time, if you're an older dude or an out of shape dude, get a hold of the handle of the kayak, lean back, cross your legs and rest for a second. The number one thing you don't want to do is freak out and you don't want to get your heart rate up to further accelerate the problem and end up with the worst medical condition that we had before. The cool thing about this ADS is it comes with the loop already built in. Now you can do this with a Yakima strap, an NRS strap or one of those types of straps, but the cool thing about this strap is I can adjust it by pulling the boat to me, getting my foot in the strap just like so and grab the tag end right here. Now what I'm going to do is I've got my foot in the loop. I'm going to stand up and bring the boat to me just like that. So I'm going to come around, demonstrate one more time what I did. I simply took the strap, put it over my foot, brought my knee up in front of me, got a hold to the boat and the strap itself and just leaned back and used my body weight to pull the boat over on top. Now when you've got rods and reels and lures and line and depth finders and things like that, it's going to be a little bit more difficult which is why you have to commit. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to flip the kite back over. I'm going to do it one more time. I'm going to show you guys exactly what I'm talking about. So we're going to flip this boat back over just like so. I'm going to get this tag in. I'm going to lay it right there. What that's going to do with the ADS is it's going to allow me to pull some slack as I flip over. So again, I'm going to take the strap, put it on my foot, grab the strap, line it up with the center of the boat and my hand will grab the tag end, get up as far as I can. You're going to stand up and fall back. You're going to catch the boat with your hand. Now you've got your boat righted. The next thing you're going to want to do, the first thing you're going to want to do is try to lay your seat down if you can. So if you've got a black pack or something like that, this may not be possible. But again, this is one of those things you want to do if you can. Lay your seat down. Okay. I like to come in from the other side of the boat. So I'm going to come back around. This is yet again another cool benefit of this ADS. What I can do is I can take this strap, I can take the loop and get it on my foot. Okay. Then I can take that strap and loosen it up or tighten it up. Now I've got a little bit of a boost to help me get back in the boat. What I want you to remember when it comes to getting inside of a fishing kayak is you want to do belly, boat, butt. So again, I've got this ADS helping me out a little bit. I'm basically going to pull up and launch myself onto the boat. All right guys. So here we go. I got this ADS helping me out a little bit. So I'm simply going to pull up and launch myself onto the boat, get the belly on there first. So what just happened there is I didn't commit. So I'm going to show you guys that because if you don't commit, you're going to make the problem twice as bad. A lot of people think that you have to have a strap to get back in the boat and the boat does, the strap does help. Get your PFD down, get it nice and secured. All your straps tight, including your shoulder straps, maintaining contact with the boat with your strap. Clear off one side of the boat. You notice here, I just had a base left on that side of the boat. So I'm going to take that off. We'll go ahead and stow it inside of here. So what you want to do is you want to do what I call the Superman pull. You're going to lay out flat if you can, let the PFD get your torso up. I'm going to grab the side of the boat and you want to jet yourself up onto the boat so that you get your body over the tipping point. This is the belly portion. You're going to bring your legs in, rotate to your butt. Your butt doesn't have to be in the seat. You just need to get your butt in the boat, bring your legs around, scoot up, regain your composure, get into the seat, get your yard sale organized, and you just recovered from flipping your fishing rod. All right, so guys, now I'm going to show you a hybrid of those two. So take the loop from your strap, and again, this could be the ADS from Rogue, or it could just be a strap with a loop in it. You're going to put it over your foot, just like so, bring that foot out behind you. You're going to want to adjust it so that when you push forward, you're pulling the boat towards you. You're giving yourself a little bit of leverage, but you're not pushing down on the boat to the point that you're going to flip it again. So you want to get sprawled out, and if you need to, let a little bit more strap out, adjust it, test your distance. Okay, now what you're going to do is, again, you're going to come up as best you can, belly onto the boat. Once you get the belly onto the boat, again, the number one thing is if you knock something loose, just remain calm. I'm going to put this paddle back in the paddle holder. Next thing you want to do is get your butt, so bring your outside leg in, bring your under leg underneath, roll to where your belly, your butt's now in the boat. You can scoot up to the seat, or you can just take a minute. Get your composure, get everything secured, make sure you're good, check your pulse. This is where you can get your phone out of the dry bag, call somebody, everything's good. Okay, back in the boat. Belly, butt, boat, get back in the seat, adjust everything, paddle back, and live to fish another day. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get back into a fishing kite. But listen, here's the deal. Since you're already wet, since you've already fallen in, this is also a really good chance for you to take your fishing kayak and get out there and truly test those edges, those limitations. Where can you put your weight? How far out can you go and still recover? Can you get away with pulling a Captain Morgan, putting one fish up on the side as the ladies are checking you out from the beach? I mean, are there things that you can do to build your confidence in these fishing kayaks that a lot people think are tippy, but once you get in them and you truly start to check the limitations and realize, oh, I've got all the weight on one side, and until that gunnel gets underwater, I'm getting support. So I'm really not going anywhere. And listen, if this is any form of consolation, if this fat boy can do it, anybody can do it. So again, just get out there and play around, test the limits, you know, pick one foot up and see if you can get away with it. And so I've seen people do this a lot. They're out there fishing. They miss a hook set or they break a line. They get the slightest little verbal and they overcompensate and kind of throw themselves out of the boat. So like, for example, I'm Billy Bob, right? I'm out there fishing. Everybody's got the cousin Billy Bob. We're out there fishing. I've got my, this is my air fishing rod, which is similar to an air guitar. We'll be selling Chad Hoover Signature Series Air Rods here pretty soon on the website. But you know, you're fishing along. Oh, there he is. You set the hook and you either miss the fish or you set the hook and then the line breaks. It's like, oh, that's something that just didn't need to happen. All you had to do is trust your kayak, know the limitations and live to fish another day dry.