YouTube star mines Chattahoochee whitewater for online gold

Cameras, watches, cell phones, sunglasses, diamond studs, a pistol, and a wedding band.

What do they have in common?

They’re all things Jake Koehler found on Columbus’ whitewater course.

Koehler’s a 25-year-old college dropout from California who spends his days snorkeling the rafting course, scavenging whatever he can find, recording each outing with a GoPro camera, and posting it to YouTube.

Where his followers help earn him six figures.

It was not always so lucrative. A few years ago, Koehler wasn’t making much off his dream of full-time YouTube work. He started off posting videos of his online gaming experiences, such as highlights of “Call of Duty.” That could make about $300 a month.

That was back in Huntington Beach, Calif., where he grew up only blocks from the beach and spent his days surfing. He graduated from Huntington Beach High School in 2011 and started at Golden West Community College, taking English, history, art and ceramics.

Then he dropped English and history, and then he dropped out.

Then his parents moved to Columbus – his father’s a retired Army Ranger who teaches science at Shaw High School – and Koehler left his surfer paradise to join them.

He discovered he can surf here, too – on the whitewater course. Just off the rock island downtown is the rapid called “Powerhouse,” engineered by an underwater “wave shaper” making waves both rafts and surfboards can ride.

Koehler was among the first to surf Powerhouse, before he thought about swimming it with his GoPro, and recording it for his YouTube channel.

“I did a lot of gaming videos, and then when I moved here, I kept the gaming videos up, but it just wasn’t quite successful,” he said. “I really enjoyed going outside and going on the river, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we just make river videos, and swimming videos, and have a good time down here?’”

So he geared up and went under: “I came down here with just my GoPro. I have this face mask with a GoPro attachment, so I went hands-free, and just started looking for stuff.”

What he discovered in that green world beneath the white waves was a treasure trove.

All the best wireless devices were there, including GoPro cameras and iPhones. And a gun. And a sex toy.

All but one of the cameras he returned. “I found about three or four,” he said. “About all of them I was actually able to give back to the owners. One of them I couldn’t really figure out, and it happened to be one that I can actually use, with the right settings and everything.”

He returns lost valuables to anyone who can establish ownership, he said, but he sometimes gets inquiries from online viewers who obviously are fishing for free stuff with false claims.

Often what once was a pricey gadget is of value no more. All but one of the waterlogged phones died, he said: “They were done.”

The lone survivor was in a protective LifeProof case, he said. He returned it to the owner.

The sex toy still worked, too, when he hit the switch, he said. He let Columbus police decide whether the .380-caliber pistol with a scratched-out serial number still was functional after he found it off the Chattahoochee RiverWalk. He turned that over immediately.

He also found two watches, a pair of diamond studs, dozens of pairs of sunglasses, and innumerable fishing lures, enough to fill bags.

He typically ranges from just below the main two rapids, Powerhouse and Cut Bait, to the Dillingham Street bridge. The tail of each rapid is a hot spot where the things rafters lose come to settle.

Those who whitewater raft regularly might wonder what Columbus outfitter Whitewater Express’ clients are thinking with all this expensive stuff on them.

Asked whether people think they can shoot cell-phone selfies going through rapids, Whitewater Express owner Dan Gilbert quipped: “People think a lot of things before they go out on the river.”

He confirmed that like all outfitters, his guides give customers a briefing before launching, and that includes the warning that anything they don’t want to lose needs to be secured, and if it’s not secured in something waterproof, it’s going to get wet.

Even wedding rings are at risk, Gilbert said, but some folks don’t believe that, until it’s too late.

Koehler said he has found one wedding band, a thick one, so wide it wouldn’t stay on his thumb. He pawned it.

Other treasures he has found are not sold in stores. They are works of nature.

“A lot of turtles, catfish, bass, shad,” he said. “You see giant gar, too. Those things are really cool. You look up, and they look like sharks…. They get probably like as big and long as my surfboard, which is 5-11.”

He has seen flathead catfish weighing up to 30 pounds, plus big channel catfish, he said.

Some fish and turtles are hooked and trailing fishing line. He keeps tools with him to free them.

Hooks and line are risky business.

He keeps a sharp knife and scissors for fishing line, the most common trash in the river. He has been tangled in it before, and it is not easily broken, because the line people use here looks thick enough to have come off the business end of a weed whacker, he said.

“During the fishing season, there’s fishing line everywhere. I go around and try to clear it up, but there’s just so much. And people use really thick line that gets wrapped around your neck in the current, and the hook gets you. It’s just dangerous. That’s why I always carry a knife with me.”

The currents are tricky too, he learned. One day he went surfing below the 13th Street bridge, in high water, and got sucked into a hydraulic for 20 seconds.

“I had a really good breath,” he recalled. “If I’d been choking on a little bit of water when it sucked me down, I would have drowned. ... I was surfing the waves at high flow, and it sucked me down like 30 feet. It just felt like I was in space. It just kept me.”

Nothing he tried would free him: “I balled up, spread out, kept swimming. Actually I gave up for a second, like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ But then it just kind of spit me out. I was really lucky. That was my brush with death.”

He tries to run this shoot-and-salvage operation every day the weather and the water are clear. Storm runoff browns out underwater visibility, which is no glass-tank mermaid show to begin with.

“I try to get out here anywhere from 11 to 2 or 3, when the sun’s at its highest,” he said. “The water’s not super-clear, you know.”

Late last year his footage here went everywhere, in just two weeks. His online subscribers ballooned from 480,000 to 1.3 million. One posting got 30 million views. Those millions of eyes put him in the YouTube business for good, his career dream come true.

“In simple terms, the more views you get, the more money you get,” he said. “You can say I’m pulling in six figures. If you’re popular, you can make a decent amount. ... With a million views, you get like one or maybe two thousand dollars.”

That’s in January, when views don’t pay as well, he said. December’s better. A dollar per thousand views can go up to $8 or $12, he said.

With the cash flow came online stardom.

Strangers recognize him. Kids want his autograph. He goes out to eat and servers say, “Hey, you’re the guy on YouTube.”

Shaw students tell his dad they saw his son online.

His dad Tim Koehler retired as a first sergeant in 2006 and went back to college before becoming a teacher. Tim and Lori Koehler have three other children, Andy, 33; Tommy, 31; and Hannah, 22.

The parents gave Jake five years to prove he could live off YouTube.

He did, with some simple twists of fate.

“With YouTube, a lot of luck’s involved. It’s got to get shared, and if it gets viral that’s when it gets the big checks. ... But for the most part, with my subscriber base, I can always upload a video and get like 300,000 to 600,000 views, and I can make a decent living.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2017 at 4:15 PM with the headline "YouTube star mines Chattahoochee whitewater for online gold."