Film tour celebrates human spirit

Joy for living ruled the night at the International Fly Fishing Film Tour Saturday at the Central Arkansas Library System Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock.

Hosted by the Arkansas Fly Fishers, the Fly Fishing Film Tour featured nine fly fishing films from across the world. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Mayfly Project, Project Healing Waters and Casting for Recovery.

The films were fantastic. They were inspirational. The stories were compelling, and the cinematography was breathtaking.

More than anything, the event was a breakout party, a declaration of independence from the pandemic’s oppressive, iron- fisted rule. The members of Arkansas’s fly fishing community were genuinely thrilled to be together celebrating their mutual love fishing in Arkansas.

It was, as always, a delight to see Sherry Barnhart, who represented Casting for Recovery, an organization that serves breast cancer survivors through fly fishing. It was thrilling to see Tillman Pittman, president of the Arkansas Fly Fishers, and Joey Moll, a mentor to the fly fishing community. It was a treat to see Mark Wingfield and so many other friends that I haven’t seen in far too long. Everybody felt that way, and for that reason it was the most joyous, most festive event I have attended in a long time.

Since the pandemic hit, the Arkansas Fly Fishers has held its monthly meetings via Zoom. This allowed the group to network with similar groups around the world. Fly fishing clubs in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, desperate for fellowship with like-minded folks, Zoomed into Arkansas Fly Fishers meetings. Thus introduced to Arkansas’ fisheries, some of those folks have actually come here to fish.

That’s nice, but it’s not the same as meeting in person. Arkansas fly fishermen look forward to their monthly meetings at Whole Hog Cafe. Zoom meetings are no substitute for sharing face to face the triumphs and heartbreaks from our latest fly fishing trips. They don’t substitute for inspecting the flies you used on those trips in person, and they don’t substitute for the vibrant energy that flows among anglers when they are together. There’s no way to adequately describe it. You just have to be there.

That energy flowed in megawatts at the Fly Fishing Film Tour, which took filmgoers on tours across the United States to Costa Rica and Belize to Swedish Lapland.

My favorite film was “Black Salmon,” a film about Blane Chocklett, an angler from western Virginia fishing for cobia in Chesapeake Bay.

Because of intense fishing pressure, cobia are very hard to catch in Chesapeake Bay. Chocklett, a highly competent and adroit angler, could not buy a bite despite cobia giving his flies multiple looks and short strikes.

I most loved this film’s authenticity. It was an unadorned look, warts and all, of a typical fishing trip. It captured Chocklett’s anguish at short strikes and turnaways. It captured his frustration at the mishaps that always plague fly fishermen, the wind knots, the tangles, the miscasts and the increasing anxiety that occurs as a hard- luck day churns toward its bitter end. Highlight-packed videos always leave this stuff out, but this one made me feel as if I were in the boat. Frankly, I was relieved to see video proof that other anglers are as error prone as I am.

“Black Salmon” also conveyed the conservation message more clearly and more effectively than any film I have seen.

My next favorite was “Cocos,” which recounts the Australian fishing adventures of angler Josh Hutchins and filmmaker Kane Chenowith. They traveled to the Coco Islands, one of Australia’s most remote regions, to pursue bonefish and bumphead parrotfish.

These guys wade fished among feeding sharks, which attacked the bonefish that the anglers caught. The sharks were so aggressive that the anglers had to fight them off with their rods.

Third place was a tie between “Three Sheets” and “Northbound.” “Three Sheets” was about four diehard fishermen who skirted covid travel bans by sailing the atolls and flats of Belize to pursue permit, bonefish, barracuda, triggerfish and more.

“Northbound” was about fishing in Swedish Lapland. The anthem of this place, said one of the guides, is a mosquito’s whine followed by a slap.

The dominant theme that bound these films was the universal love of fishing coupled with the indomitable human spirit. Around the world, anglers didn’t wait for governments to lift covid restrictions. They flipped a collective bird at the disease and figured out creative ways to live their lives.

For the joy of fishing and fellowship, I was in tears from the beginning of the first film to the end of the last film.