Fishing adventures caught on the fly
These aren’t the fly fishing videos you’re daddy used to watch.
The Fly Fishing Film Tour, stopping in Spokane on Friday during a 70-theater run, wastes little time on instruction or profiling the contemplative angler. False casting is virtually prohibited.
If you’re headed to the Bing Crosby Theater, get ready to rock ‘n’ roll, from Montana for trout to Alaska and then to Mongolia for 4-foot-long taimen.
“We’ve edited seven full-length films and four or five teasers into a 2.5 hour tour,” said Thad Robison, who assumes roles ranging from angler to filmmaker to promoter from his base at AEG Media in Portland. “There’s lot’s of exciting music and the films are shot something like a Warren Miller ski movie.”
Robison’s film is called “Fish Bum Diaries: Mongolia,” featuring all the contortions and camel riding a group of anglers endured to catch the monster fish of the planet’s most remote waters.
But rather than feature his film full-length, it’s edited into a fast-paced production with the other movies.
“Each of these films is about an hour long, so it takes a lot of work to edit them down into the hottest stuff,” he said. “The result is really entertaining.
“The other filmmakers – we’re all a tight knit community – like the idea just to get their films out to a bigger audience. We all sell the full-length DVDs,” he said.
The technological advances in digital video gear enables filmmakers to catch action and make extremely high quality productions even in uncharted locations, Robison said.
“These films definitely are different from most of the things you might see on the Outdoor Channel,” he said. “They’re more progressive, shot by younger guys who take more chances. No Hollywood celebs show up to grab a rod.”
This year, however, the audience will notice a hint of a conservation theme.
“We have a few Alaska films that mention the proposed Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay watershed, one of the world’s greatest fisheries and the headwaters of Alaska’s biggest salmon run. What a tragedy, and most people have no idea. So there’s some of that.”
Otherwise, the filmmakers rarely name the river they fish.
“When we hit these places where we catch these huge fish, we follow the unwritten law keeping them confidential to avoid swarming the place with an influx of fishermen,” Robison said. “We satisfy the audience with the experience, not the destination.”
Last year’s tour drew an enthusiastic and apparently handsome crowd for its debut at the Bing.
A woman called The Spokesman-Review last week and asked when he The Fly Fishing Film Tour was coming back.
“I walked by last year and saw all of those good-looking men standing in line at The Bing,” she said. “I’m going to buy a ticket this year.”