In some recent posts I’ve referred to the innumerable fishing videos on the internet. Fishing films are not new; before video recording a few appeared on television, notably the Jack Hargreaves shorts and the longer Passion for Angling, perhaps the best ever made thanks to Hugh Miles’s cinematography. Once cassette recorders became widely available in the 1980s, angling videos proliferated. Most were instructional and produced to a reasonably professional standard.
Some of these have been posted on to internet platforms, especially Youtube, although the reproduction quality is often poor. Alongside these a deluge of amateur videos has appeared as digital film cameras have become cheap and easy to use. Most of the videos are very bad. Some offer instruction, for which there seems a limitless demand as I’ve noted before, while others are just look-at-me-catching-fish vids, in which the film subject displays various degrees of incompetence with a rod. Only lately I’ve seen a video of a fly fisherman at full stretch making a mess of netting a fish. And another so ham-fisted he let a salmon thrash about on the stones by the river, all the while to whoops of “get in” and “boozzin’”.
But there are better than these exercises in self embarrassment. The early films since uploaded to YT, despite their graininess, are generally good. Notable examples are John Holden’s excellent beachcasting videos and the hyperreal fly-tyings of Oliver Edwards, even if his impressive creations are not especially effective fish catchers. Most of the modern examples are really marketing vehicles, either for the video maker or the company that sponsors them — the ‘ambassadors’ or ‘signature fly tyers’ and other silly names. An online presence has enabled some anglers to make a living from their sport, either through guiding or some other means. Youtube is their shop window.
Rather than dwelling on all the rubbish out there, I’ll highlight a small number of videos that actually have some merit. None of them is perfect. Some are too long or too repetitive, some are overlaid with raucous rock or plinkyplonky atmospheric music, neither of which are well chosen background, if there needs to be background at all.
One of my favourites is Davie McPhail’s fly-tying and fishing videos. He has one advantage that few others possess — what they used to call a radio voice. This means that McPhail, a soft spoken Scotsman, is actually pleasant to listen to, an important quality in a long video. He is a skilled fly tyer and works faster than most; the videos contain much useful information. The drawback of course is that he makes tying flies look much easier than most of us find it, and if you tied all the patterns he shows us you wouldn’t use a tenth of them. His fishing trip films are perhaps not as successful. He only takes a chest camera so you get a view of arms and a rod butt with the river in the background. But they’re edited well and in short viewings are interesting with a fluent commentary and useful tips. His business model appears twofold — he is a Fulling Mill ambassador, which means he is paid to advertise their products; he also holds a monthly draw for subscribers (125,000 plus) who donate to the site. With that many followers, there is a large income potential, though I’d be surprised if he earns six figures.
A number of YT channels are used by guides to advertise their services. One of these I look at is IB and Andy Fishing run by Andy Buckley and his partner IB (real name Ieva). Andy is I believe a full time guide; IB has a day job. The videos appear much less frequently than Davie McPhail’s and are mainly of fishing on Derbyshire trout rivers. Buckley uses a chest camera plus a static camera so the videos look more professional, even including a bit of aerial footage. He is also a fluent narrator, although with a habit of using Americanisms, calling fish ‘buddy’ and referring to fish ‘eating’ a fly rather than taking or rising to it. Eating implies swallowing, which you definitely do not want a fish to do. Despite this and a tendency to chortle away while playing fish, and making a show of expertise (‘technical fishing’), I find him engaging. Since he catches plenty of fish I imagine the punters keep him busy.
Both McPhail and Buckley are good on their fish handling. The latter does have that slightly irritating habit of hanging on to the fish in the water, curling his fingers around as the fish swims out of his grip. I don’t suppose this does the fish any harm as the hands are wet but it has become a tiresome cliché of fish release in too many videos. McPhail always emphasises wetting hands before touching a fish; to release he places the fish in the water and withdraws his hand, no lingering shots nonsense.
Another professional fishing guide, demonstrator and film star is Paul Proctor. He makes videos rather promiscuously with different companies, most recently Guideline and Fulling Mill. These are filmed by a cameraman so the result is more polished and the angler can talk to camera without worrying about set up of the kit. With careful editing you get an hour or so of mishap-free fishing, which of course is what attracts the viewer. If he can do it, why shouldn’t I? There is a fair bit of product placement as you’d expect, but Proctor’s basic lesson, keep out of sight of the fish and don’t frighten them away, is a good one.
Another denizen of the Fulling Mill stable is Howard Croston, a competition angler and therefore considered particularly expert. Employed by Hardy, his videos are a mix of tackle recommendations (i.e. adverts) and how-to-fish. He used to make his own indoor videos but more recently has worked with Fulling Mill and John Norris (a northern tackle shop) on waterside features. His camera persona is more dour than the others. He spends a fair amount of time talking about the mistakes anglers make, which is the kind of thing you might expect from a winner of the World Fly Fishing Championship. The question is how much of the quest to be as efficient an angler as possible is useful to the everyday fisherman. The fine minutiae of tackle boils down to personal preference as often as not and only has glancing relevance to those who do not fish in competitions. You can certainly pick up useful tips from Croston as he loftily doles them out but the videos mentioned above are most likely to be useful to you and me.
In the end, advice on how to catch fish has limited value. As I said in a previous post, the most useful knowledge is that which you gain yourself through your own fishing experience. A wider problem with internet videos is that they are displacing printed magazines because most anglers prefer to watch actual fish-catching, no matter how bad the video, or read flat accounts in countless free blogs. Then again, the magazines are not all that great either. Plenty of books on fishing are still getting published, however, so perhaps the written word will survive the onslaught of virtual drivel. I even bought one myself recently. Maybe I’ll write about that in another post.
The Secret Angler 