Another vote here for the GoPro Hero.  I mounted one onto the side of my solo canoe with the suction cup mount so it's easy to remove for portages.  It's a fisheye-lens-style camera so you can get a full field of view without having the camera too far away to turn on and off as needed.

The housing is waterproof which is a great feature for a camera that you'll be using on the water.  The main drawback of being waterproof is that means it's pretty much soundproof as well, so if you want sound to go with your video you are out of luck.  

There are all sorts of mounting options for it so you can attach it to almost anything or anyone.

It works underwater so theoretically I could mount it underwater and get some video of landing fish from under the surface.  Haven't tried this yet, but I will sometime.

Here's a sample video:

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