Reeling in videos

Lots of anglers will chalk up a day of bad fishing, head back to the lodge to unwind, and try to forget about being skunked.

But not Valley native Bob Asbury.

His two-day fishing trips simply have to provide fish. This isn’t a vacation, after all.

Asbury is a one-man production team making “Columbia Country,” a fishing show focusing on the Western United States and Canada, which is in its fifth season on the air.

And if the fish don’t rise or the weather spoils the shoot?

“Well, we spend more time doing background stuff and info,” Asbury said.

“Columbia Country” is Asbury’s life. His office and studio are in the low-ceiling basement of his Liberty Lake house, and for most of the year, he’s either watching some of the most beautiful scenery in the West through a viewfinder or he’s hunkered in his editing bay, fine-tuning the shows before they are shipped out to 46 stations from Alaska to Nebraska.

Fishing isn’t a sport; it’s a living for Asbury. But for all that time on the water, he has fished only one or two times since he began the show.

“It’s not that I don’t like to fish. I just can’t do both,” he said. “If I did, the quality of the show would suffer.”

From March to October, Asbury and show host Carl Mann, an outfitter from Missoula, take three- or four-day trips to places all around the West. Often those trips take place in a van emblazoned with the show’s logo.

Some of the drives, like the ones to North Dakota, are longer than others.

“Carl bought a little DVD player for the road, and I listen to bluegrass music on the satellite radio,” Asbury said. The pair alternate driving and sleeping.

The two-man team has journeyed to the Northwest Territories and the rivers of Montana. They’ve seen beautiful alpine streams and broad, basin rivers.

But one place the show hasn’t been is the open sea.

“I don’t do well with a camera in a boat on the waves,” said Asbury, smiling.

The show began in 2000, and its original focus stayed true to its name. Most of the shows were about fishing areas within the Pacific Northwest.

But as the show was discovered and picked up by more stations, Asbury ventured away from the Northwest.

Mann usually joins an outfitter or area expert on the water. Fly fishing is the preferred method, though others are readily employed as well.

Usually Asbury can capture enough film of fishing, scenery, birds and flowers to produce a good show, he said.

Before “Columbia Country,” Asbury worked in commercial music production and also spent time filming outdoors shows for a company in Kansas City. Many of those shows were tapes to be rented, and after the rental market fell in 1999, he came up with the idea for the show.

“I decided if I was going to stay in the video production business, I’d better find something more stable,” Asbury said.

Remembering his childhood love for Curt Gowdy’s “The American Sportsman,” one of the first national television shows to feature outdoor activities, Asbury decided to make his own show.

Some thought it impossible to complete. People told him he wouldn’t be able to find enough money, he said.

To court sponsors, Asbury devoted a few minutes of each show to note conservation and fish habitat restoration.

Soon sponsors were coming through, and the show hasn’t stopped since.

Asbury thinks the show is successful in part because it focuses on local areas and familiar fish species.

“It’s a show for people in the West,” he said.

“People are interested in the local species.

“They’re not interested in people catching bass down in Georgia.”

Asbury films the show in Liberty Lake, as well, at the Big Trout Lodge apartment complex.

The facility has a large open area that works well for filming the show’s introductions.

He produces all the openings and closings for a season’s worth of shows in a day at the end of each summer.

And after traveling thousands of miles for shows, at least once this year he’ll stay close to home, with a feature on a young man from Liberty Lake who won a world Bassmaster championship.

In the future, Asbury hopes to add a marketing director to his staff.

Maybe then he’ll have some more free time.

Asbury’s favorite time of year is autumn, which is also when he is busiest with editing.

“People say I’ve got the dream job, but they don’t realize it doesn’t give you a lot of time to enjoy doing things you love,” Asbury said.