SEARCH STILL ON FOR FISHERMAN IN LAKE O
Maine-based group adds team of 12 boats to expanding effort.
Dozens of boaters joined the search Sunday for a missing fisherman who was thrown from a boat during the first day of a bass-fishing competition on Lake Okeechobee.
The frantic search began late Thursday after Nik Kayler, 38, and fellow angler Bill Kisiah failed to check in at C. Scott Driver Park in Okeechobee. Kisiah came ashore in his Ranger Z521 at around 11 p.m. Thursday near the Pahokee Marina.
The search for Kayler, a champion angler and military veteran from Apopka, north of Orlando, continued Sunday, aided by the use of at least 32 private boats, one rescue group said.
The Maine-based search and rescue group DEEMI has a team of 12 boats scouring the lake for Kayler, director Richard Bowie said Sunday. The group also helped search for Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, the two Tequesta 14-year-olds who went missing at sea on July 24, 2015.
Bowie said an additional 20 to 30 private boats also were searching for Kayler on Sunday.
DEEMI called off the search for the day before 4 p.m. due to deteriorating conditions.
Boaters and fishermen have created a Facebook group to help coordinate their search efforts. In a message posted to the group Saturday, Kayler’s wife, Kelly, thanked those involved in the search.
“Thank you all so much for all you are doing,” she wrote. “I know you are going to find my husband and bring him home to me and our little girl. I am forever grateful!!!”
Bowie said Sunday’s effort included several larger boats with side-scan sonar equipment to help better search the murky lake water.
“They are doing a good job,” Bowie said. “Through the day here, we hope that we will find him.”
A plan to use ATVs to search
the land around the lake’s shore was called off Sunday after Bowie said his team was unable to get permission from federal officials who manage the dike to scour the area.
“They wouldn’t grant us permission to search,” he said. “There are obviously areas that the boats can’t get into.”
Kayler and Kisiah launched the boat on the north end of the lake Thursday morning, the inaugural day of the Fishing League Worldwide’s Costa Series competition. The two fishermen — both of whom have competed in dozens of events — might have been heading toward South Bay to fish, officials said.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Carol Lyn Parrish said Friday that “something happened” and both men were thrown from the boat.
It was uncertain whether wintry temperatures in the area were a factor. A report on the tournament’s webpage indicated that anglers were having a tough time on the water.