Behind The Scenes Series: 1200 Miles

All that glitter is not gold was the saying for Marketing Team Members Jake & Colby as they made their way to the KBF National Championships in Tennessee this past October. This trip would ultimately be FeelFree's second time visiting the KBF series in the past year and they were amazed at the growth the sport has seen in the few short years of its existence.

The premise of our trip was to do a feature film with our newest fishing team member, Antoine Desrochers-Gagon. Antoine was born and raised just outside of Quebec where he has been refining his fishing skills for quite sometime.

We first heard of Antoine over a year ago when our Canadian Dealer, Kayak Junky, mentioned this up and coming angler that was using an old, beat up Lure 11.5. We would soon hear more about Antoine after a top 10 finish in the Bassmaster Classic down in South Carolina. It would ultimately leave us wanting to know more about who Antoine was as a person and as an angler.

After some team discussions, emails and a few phone calls. It was decided that our Marketing team would meet up with Antoine during the KBF Nationals to make a feature film. We had questions like who is Antoine? Where did he grow up? What type of fishing does he enjoy? Ultimately, we would answer all these questions as we set off on our journey to film.

As we set off to Kentucky lake, we would soon realize that the southeast would be facing a major cold front. From a film standpoint, this would not be an issue. But, from a fishing standpoint this could be rather challenging. Bass are rather big babies when it comes to cold temps and we wondered how the fishing would actually be.

9 hours later and we would find ourselves standing on Antoine's door with the camera in hand. The first few hours of filming would take place this very evening as we delivered his new boat. The new boat would be the Dorado V2 which had just been released. Antoine was excited to say the least and prior to this moment was using an old Lure 11.5. We spent the remainder of the evening filming and assisting in outfitting this boat.

The next morning we would race to the boat ramp in an attempt to get some sunrise drone shots. Sunrise shots have quickly become our bread and butter when filming on the water as the lighting just happens to look perfect. We would get there, Colby would begin flying the drone, and I (myself) would begin setting up the kayaks and running the instagram account. A few minutes into the drone flight, Colby would begin yelling that he had lost connection to his drone and it happened to be out of sight as well. We begin to panic but also decide to look up a solution on reddit. A few subthreads in a matter of seconds and we somehow managed to reconnect the drone and land with only thirty seconds of flight time left.

After our near loss, Antoine would arrive and we would begin our day of filming on the water. Kentucky Lake is extremely big and being in a paddle kayak meant that you had to do a variety of work off the water frantically driving around to points on the lake looking for fish. We would ultimately cover lots of water that day and only end up seeing one fish toward the very end of the day.

Once we were off Kentucky Lake, we would make our way back to Antoines apartment where he opened our eyes to how much prep work goes into a day of fishing. Every night, Antoine opens up Google Earth for hours and looks for features on Kentucky Lake and the surrounding tributaries to locate spots that he believe could hold fish. Once he finds a few spots, then he saves the pins and give them a try the following day.

The next day, Antoine would fish the locations he had scouted and would ultimately eliminate water with no fish or save pins that held fish. If Antoine did catch a fish, then he would make a mental note of the spot and revisit it on competition day.

While he fished, we would be interviewing Antoine and gathering sound bites. Simple questions to him could be monumental for another angler just starting out. We asked questions like how to fish in colder weather and select a lure.

In the end, Antoine would fish his way into the top 100 later that week despite only catching five fish. The fishing was tough, but as a team, we stuck with it and the few fish we caught were very rewarding to say the least. At the end of the day, we call it fishing, and not catching and if it was easy, then none of use would do it. We hope you get out there this fall season and have a blast.