Welcome to the Black Friday Classics edition of the OrvisNews.com Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival, which features some of my favorite videos from FFFs from the past. (I hope you didn’t stay up all night fighting the crowds to buy a new flatscreen and are awake enough to enjoy these fantastic scenes.) There’s lots of great stuff here, featuring both freshwater and saltwater action, culled from the last year and a half of these fun collections. You’ll follow these videomakers to New Zealand, Cuba, the Bahamas, Canada, and around the U.S. and get inside the fly-fishing world of all these waters. But if you do stumble upon something great that you think is worthy of inclusion in a future FFF, please post it in the comments below. See you next week with a fresh set of films!
Endless days from columbus leth on Vimeo.
Here’s a beautiful rumination on the “true meaning” of fly fishing for Atlantic salmon from Danish photographer Columbus Leth. It’s less about trophy fish and more about the season, the weather, the landscape, and the camaraderie.
Dry or Die Rolf from Rolf Nylinder on Vimeo.
You gotta love Rolf. The boy does love to fish, and he makes no attempt to temper his childlike glee when he hooks this fine brown on his first cast. It’s only later that we learn how the day before had an effect on his reaction shown here. Yeeeap!
As some of us are coming to the realization that our fishing for the year is mostly over, New Zealand fly fishers are just getting started. Check out this guy’s first dry-fly trout of the season: it’s the kind of fish that would be the highlight of the year for most anglers. Those folks down there enjoy an embarrassment of riches; just check out the shoulders on that brown at 5:45!
Here’s a bit of bug goodness from our friend Dave Jensen of Fly Fish Alberta. They get some amazing hatches in the rivers of the region, which brings the big brown to the surface. Dave and his wife, Amelia, enjoy taking advantage of these circumstances.
Andros Bonefish 2011 from Lee Kuepper on Vimeo.
If a northerner really wants to get warm in the winter, he should head to the tropics. This highlight reel from Andros Island in The Bahamas features plenty of sun, gorgeous flats, sweet bonefish, a scary shark who doesn’t seem to want to be unhooked, and a thirsty crab.
Fish On Productions from Dean Hodson on Vimeo.
Few things are as mesmerizing to an angler as a trout taking a fly off the surface. I don’t know about you, but I could watch feeding fish all day and never get bored–even if I didn’t have a fly rod in my hand. This video features some of the best shots of gorging trout I’ve ever seen.
This is a gorgeous video that explores the effects of the giant Gulf oil spill on the fishery in the Louisiana marshes where anglers cast for big redfish. What the filmmakers found might surprise you. “The fishery is alive—as alive as its ever been.”
The Trifecta from Yukon Goes Fishing on Vimeo.
It’s been a six months since I’ve been to Montana, and videos like this make me wonder why I don’t live there, for Pete’s sake. Our old friend Yukon hits a trio of southwestern Montana waters for excellent fishing and wildlife viewing.
Cuba is still a travel problem for American anglers, but there’s no shortage of great fly-fishing footage coming from the expansive flats around the isolated island. Plenty of great tarpon, bonefish, and permit action here…even an underwater kiss.
Finally, here’s a really beautiful video about a trip into the Colorado high country to catch greenback cutthroat trout. Not only is the scenery stunning, but the filmmaking is top-notch, as well. Check out the cool shot at about 5:00, when you see a trout strike a dry fly from an underwater perspective. Have a great weekend!