Howdy y'all,
I'm not sure if a lot of you know who I am, but if you're familiar with Aripeka Angler (he's my dad) than you might know me. For those of you who don't know who i am; my name's Harrison Grimes and I'm currently studying Marine Biology with a minor in geology at Florida Gulf Coast University. Recently, four of us received word that we would possibly be getting a sponsorship to make a movie about fishing around Florida. My roommate happens to be the Guy Harvey/Aftco Rep of the year (two years running). We sent a proposal into Guy Harvey/Aftco during this past summer for a sponsorship for a 12-16 day trip around Florida's fishing hotspots. They responded by sending down Chris's supervisor to see what we could do. He flew down to Florida and visited us and asked us, "put me on a snook no matter the size."
We took him out and needless to say this 38" slob was enough...
(John on the left is also going on the trip, the Aftco supervisor on the right)
He shook our hands and agreed to fully sponsor our trip this winter. Now, what are we doing for this trip? I thought you'd never ask. We're deciding between 12 and 16 days depending on certain circumstances, but as of right now: Our first stop might be "the Everglades" we haven't found a camp site for northwest side of the Everglades but if we can we might consider adding a couple days to fish for tarpon and snook in the backwaters up there. The three main spots we will be stopping (we think) will be Flamingo, Islamorada, and Mosquito Lagoon. We are looking for camp sites in Flamingo and Mosquito Lagoon at the moment. We already have a place to stay in Islamorada.
Now why am I ranting and raving about this trip? Well because we want to make a badass movie about four friends traveling Florida with Gheenoes fishing for tarpon, redfish, snook, permit, bonefish, and whatever else we can get into. Guy Harvey and Aftco already agreed to share our movie/videos on their facebook, website, instagram and other social media sites. We already have gotten a sponsorship by Yeti who sent us some apparel, stickers, etc for our trip. We received the nod on another sponsor as well by the name of Flounder's Flies who will be tying all of our flies for the trip. And we also are currently talking to GoPro and Skinny Water Culture as well. A cool thing about all of our sponsorship apparel etc for the trip, we're taking it and donating it to the JMW annual fishing tournament. Last year we lost a fellow student, avid fisherman, and close friend and we (his friends) put together a fishing tournament in 2 monthes and raised almost $6,000 to give to his family who inherited his student loans. So this year we're taking apparel and stuff given to us by these sponsors and donating them to Jesse's annual tournament making our sponsors not only supporting us and marketing themselves in our trip, but also they're getting further acknowledgement at the tournament in February.
But personally, the coolest part of our trip is that if we get enough views and hype about our video, this could turn our four dreams into a reality. All of us going on the trip (two marine biology majors, one environmental science major, and one marketing major who wants to guide when he graduates) want to do something in the fish(ing) field. And Guy Harvey/Aftco told us that if this trip is cool enough we will get the nod on another (bigger) trip this summer. And perhaps help us all along our career paths further down the road.
So, if any of you know of any - campsites in the aforementioned locations, guides around there who would be willing to talk to us or even take us out if they're given the proper exposure, or fishing/boating/apparel companies who you think would be interested in sponsoring our trip please let me know!
And thank you for reading that book I just wrote.
Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest- thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the under wood. You will grow back, over and over no matter how badly you are devastated.
