Welcome to another edition of the OrvisNews.com Friday Film Festival, in which we scour the web for the best fly-fishing footage available. This week’s collection is mostly amateur footage, but there’s no shortage of great action and gorgeous fish. There’s plenty of backcountry action, from Montana to New Zealand, as well as a group of college students who may well turn out to be future FFF stars if they build on what they learned in school. Saltwater fans can enjoy some great tarpon leaps, as well as Everglades redfish action. Choosing the videos to include every Friday is getting more and more difficult because there’s so much great stuff out there. Remember, we surf so you don’t have to. 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. Enjoy!
Nothing beats having a whole river to yourself, and there are few better ways to achieve that than hiking into the backcountry. This pair of intrepid anglers hoofs it into the Montana mountains to fish the North Fork of the Blackfoot and Monture Creek, where despite high water they find some beautiful cutthroats. The pistol-loading scene at the beginning suggests that there may be some big, toothy critters to avoid, as well.
July 18, 2011 Poon from Ganesh Chatani on Vimeo.
Here’s some great POV footage of tarpon fishing on a less-than-ideal day on the water. The weather doesn’t seem to stop the tarpon from eating, though. Check out the nightmare scenario at 1:07, which somehow doesn’t result in the loss of a fish. We should all be so lucky.
Lazy Man Summer Edit from Scot Hinkel on Vimeo.
After watching watching the first minute of this video, I thought, “Okay. That’s some decent small-stream footage.” Then, at about 1:22, my eyes popped out of my head. I won’t ruin the surprise for you, but trust me, you don’t expect what happens here.
Ringin’ The Bell from Adam Haarberg on Vimeo.
What this video lacks in picture quality, it more than makes up for in topwater action. Largemouth bass hammering a popper is always fun to watch, and you’ll see just about every kind of take here, plus some pretty decent bucketmouths. There’s no shortage of swings-and-misses, either. I don’t know where this lake is, but I wanna go.
South Island 101 pt 2 from flydogsdownunder on Vimeo.
I don’t know about you, but I never get sick of seeing anglers chasing big browns in New Zealand. The best part of this video is the protracted battle of wits between a gorgeous trout and a determined angler that starts at about 6:00. It takes just the right fly and a good cast to get the fish to eat, something we’ve all experience with less impressive fish.
More great saltwater fly-fishing action from the Everglades, where the redfish don’t grow huge, but they do love to eat flies. I especially like the underwater footage here.
Okay, the picture quality of this video isn’t great, and it’s pretty shaky, too. But it shows something that every trout fisherman would love to see: a huge trout gobbling your perfectly-presented dry fly. The arrogant laziness of this take shows that this trout is lord of all he surveys.
Here’s a college course any of us would be eager to take. The University of Utah College of Health’s Backpack Fly Fishing Course goes beyond the standard college fly-fishing curriculum–with students casting on a practice field and learning to tie a Woolly Bugger–and actually takes class members on a backpacking trip for backcountry trout. I never thought I’d say this, but I wanna go back to school. Have a great weekend!