Film tour a treat for fly fishermen

As a new fan of specialty film festivals, I am excited about the Fly Fishing Film Tour on Saturday at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Ron Robinson Auditorium in Little Rck.

Hosted by the Arkansas Fly Fishers, the event will feature nine films that chronicle fly fishing adventures around the world. The doors will open at 5 p.m., and the first film will screen at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $15 and are available at arkansasflyfishers.com. Proceeds will benefit Casting for Recovery (fly fishing for breast cancer survivors), Project Healing Waters (fly fishing for veterans with PTSD), and The Mayfly Project (connecting foster children through fly fishing)

Many fly fishermen will tell you that catching fish is secondary. The experience of casting in beautiful, unfamiliar places is paramount. As much as I cherish the ability to fish anytime on the White, North Fork and Little Red rivers, I cherish just as much for different reasons having cast in Idaho’s Silver Creek, West Virginia’s Elk River, New Mexico’s Conejos River, Wyoming’s Snake River, Colorado’s South Fork River, and even the spring pond at Withrow Springs State Park near Huntsville. The satisfaction is merely having been there. Of course, it doesn’t hurt the experience to have caught fish at all those places.

You can live our kindred spirits vicariously at the Fly Fishing Film Tour. Here are some quick capsules of what you will see there:

THE LEGEND OF CASA MAR

Produced in 2021, this film features tarpon fishing in Costa Rica with Jesse Males, Mark Evans, Micah Baly and Thony Nunez. The film toggles from present to past as it honors Costa Rica’s storied tarpon fishing past while celebrating its present.

THREE SHEETS

Adventure travel shut down during the worst of the pandemic, but four diehard fishermen got around the bans by sailing the atolls and flats of Belize to pursue permit, bonefish, barracuda, triggerfish and more.

Unwelcome in populated areas, the group traveled by sailboat, paddleboard and by hiking. In the context of the time, their experiences are truly a triumph of spirit over adversity, beauty over darkness and life over death.

DAN’S PAIN

This is the story of a popular, much loved man who can’t catch fish in his native Louisiana. To change his luck, he opts for a change of scenery and culture by traveling to the Colombian coast to cast for tuna.

BLACK SALMON

Considered easy to catch in many places, the cobia is extremely hard to catch in Chesapeake Bay. There it is very popular and heavily pressured by anglers and also by diminishing habitat.

This is as much a conservation film as a fishing film. Its message applies to every other fish that anglers treasure.

PHOENIX

Considered the festival’s anchor production, this film tells the story of Katie Fiedler Anderson, a fly fishing guide in Vail, Colo., who along with her husband, brings her 4-year old daughter into the fly fishing family. It is a story of relationships, nurturing, transitioning to different phases of life, and passing the love of fishing on to the next generation.

COMMON GROUND

Set in British Columbia, this film focuses on the community aspect of steelhead fishing in Canada.

Missy McDonald owns a steelhead fishing lodge on the Skeena River, and its regulars are a big extended family. They come from all walks of life and different economic backgrounds, but fishing binds them in fraternity and equality.

COCOS

Another pandemic account, this film recounts the Australian fishing adventures of angler Josh Hutchins and filmmaker Kane Chenowith. They travel to the Coco Islands, one of Australia’s most remote regions, to pursue bonefish and bumphead parrotfish.

CICADA HATCH

This trout fishing film records Matt Devlin’s very personal journey from Montana back home to Maryland in search of a storied insect hatch that only occurs every 17 years.

A FLY LORD’S PRODUCTION

Dropped thousands of miles from home in a land where the sun never sets, a group of anglers explores Sweden’s Laplands. The anglers encounter some of the truest wild left on the planet while soul searching to rediscover and redefine their reasons for fishing.