Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival 01.24.14

Welcome to a new edition of the Orvis News Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival, in which we scour the Web for the best fly-fishing videos available. We have a great selection this week, twenty videos that will take you from Australia to Norway, South Africa to France. We’re a little light on the salty stuff this week, so I hope you like the trout and steelhead. . .and I know you do.

If you are interested in traveling to a dream destination like some of those shown here, don’t forget to enter our Orvis Adventures contest!

For best results, watch all videos at full-screen and in high definition. 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 F5, please post it in the comments below, and we’ll take a look. And don’t forget to check in regularly at The Tug, the Orvis online video theater. See you next week with a fresh set of films!

Exciting news: Our old pal Håvard Stubø and his musical gang of fly fishers are back for another season. This clip also offers background on how the project originally came together, which is pretty cool.

“Doc of the Drakes” ranks very high in the pantheon of all-time great fly-fishing videos, and here’s the five-minute version of the follow-up, for those who haven’t seen it.

I’d be a little wary of a river named for something that might eat me, but this South African stream seems pretty sweet and full of rainbows.

The recent “polar vortex” is a common theme in videos this week (see below). This one features some great redfish action south of New Orleans. The Red Sox cap puts this one over the top for me. Looks like a dream trip.

Jake Forsline, of ColoradoTroutDevotee.com, heads deep into the backcountry on a quest to find golden trout. Ten days, 100+ miles, a 50-pound pack, and no fuel (justa simple wood burning backpacking stove.

Some dry-fly action from New Zealand, filmed solo on a small stream. The videographer says he landed five large fish, between 5 and 6.5 pounds, and seven smaller ones, which he didn’t included in this clip so as not to bore us.

Fishing the saltwater bays and beaches of Norway never looked so good.

Here’s some gorgeous footage from the Dordogne region of France, featuring a jaunty soundtrack and some beautiful images of the countryside and fishing.

Guides’ day off means some time for drinks, laughs, steelheead, and Waylon Jennings.

From Russia with love: big, bad brown trouts.

“Donati Vortex” sounds like an Umberto Eco novel, but it’s really all about one man’s quest for steel in Michigan. Go figure.

Giant brown trout from Argentina’s Rio Grande. You’ll see why folks make the grueling trip and brave the powerful winds.

As a native New Englander, my first thought when I saw the title of this videos was, “Where the hell are the Tablelands?” Then I realized it was filmed in “Newer England,” which is in Australia. Cool fish, though.

Here’s a video that shows a portion of the Snake River fishery not often on display, complete with a freight train in the background.

From Sweden comes this lovely rumination on what we miss all winter long.

How does one say “humongous rainbow” in Spanish?

It takes guts to film yourself not catching anything, edit the footage into a two-and-a-half-minute video, and then call it “Skunked.” But this really captures an experience we’ve all had.

The canals of Holland look like a fun place to chase pike. I just wish Willem wouldn’t put his hand in the fish’s gills like that.

This looks like it must be a pretty cool place to work, don’t you think?

Finally, here’s a long season recap of a season in Washington State, featuring a bunch of young and obviously passionate anglers.