TROUT BUMS ON SCREEN
Steve Dally showcases the latest fly fishing DVDs
There was plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the Denver Fly Show last year over the rapidly ageing US fly fishing population—median age 54 and rising. But it’s not as if there aren’t some hungry young fly fishers out there doing things their way. Two superb DVDs were showcased in Denver, widely differing in style and content, but both challenging fly-fishing convention.
THE TROUT BUM DIARIES
If you have wandered Internet bulletin boards at all you probably have seen the pseudonym ‘worldanglr’, Ryan Davey, who in the flesh is a dreadlocked Pied Piper, travelling the globe in search of big brown trout, and other species. You name the place, he’s been there—camping the Tassie Highlands, across the States, working as a deckie in New Zealand. Some-how he parlayed this experience into a full-time gig, establishing the Angling Exploration Group, with backing from major players like Patagonia, Scientific Anglers, Loop, and a team of like-minded souls to create their first film.
The Trout Bum Diaries hark back to the early surf movies. A team of ‘hard-core’ addicts head out into wild and beautiful places, in this case Patagonia, and try to find the ultimate fly-fishing experience. Along the way they meet locals and strange animals, and catch more fish than you and I dream about. Their goal is fly-fishing as entertainment, aimed squarely at a 20-something audience, looking to inspire a generation, in the manner of Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer.
Fuddy duddies can mute the soundtrack and enjoy the pictures. But for the young or young-at-heart, give The Trout Bum Diaries the respect it deserves. Pay homage to its roots and watch it with as big a group of fishing mates as you can muster, a slab of tinnies in the cooler, and hoot and holler at all the good bits.
THE HATCH
The Hatch tells a story I had wanted to
do for a while, of the amazing ‘salmon
fly’ emergence in the threatened Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, but there is no way my words could match Ben Knight and Travis Rummel’s wide-screen images. The bugs are big and ugly, and draw every large fish to the surface for some of the most stunning dry fly gluttony you can ever hope to watch. Yet the river, despite its National Park status is under threat from the voracious water demands of the fast-growing population and the Bush government’s winding back of environmental controls in such places.
Visually The Hatch is stunning, with superb scenic and fishing footage interspersed with black-and-white interviews with local guides and others who care about this river’s future. If the spell-binding sequence of a large rainbow eating 12 salmon flies in about 7 second doesn’t make you want to leap off the couch and go fishing you might be reading the wrong magazine.