Chad Watts knows all too well how hard kayaks are to see in the dark. Several years ago, while fishing in a tournament on Lake Jordan, he nearly ran over a kayaker.
They were fishing at what is considered “safe light,” just as it is getting light enough to see, but before the sun has risen. “I was running 75 miles an hour toward a wide cove. There was a piece of land that jutted out about 30 feet, so I couldn’t see around the other side of it until I got almost even with it,” said Watts.
“By that time, I was doing about 60. When I came around, there was a kayaker 20 yards from my boat. How I avoided running completely over the top of him, I don’t know. I was so rattled, I couldn’t fish.”
Watts went to check on the kayaker and wound up talking to him for 30 minutes (in the middle of the tournament). What came from the experience was a friendship and a product that makes kayak fishing safer.
Watts started Firefly Marine, a company out of Trussville, that produces the Firefly stern light. The difference in their product over what was available previously is both the height of the light (telescopes to over 9 feet) and the material of the light (refracting plastic to eliminate blinding light).
