DVD Review - ‘Flies that catch Fish’ Volumes 1 & 2, presented by Bob Wyatt

[davidms]

Further to Gander's post, below, here's my review

‘Flies that catch Fish’ Volumes 1 & 2, presented by Bob Wyatt

Bob Wyatt’s book ‘Trout Hunting – the Pursuit of Happiness’ was, for my money, one of the best fly fishing books to have been published during the last 15 years, and these two 90 minute long DVDs are in some ways ‘the film of the book’, and in other ways not. The DVDs were made by husband and wife team Jeanie Ackley and Carl McNeil who filmed the sublime ‘Once in a Blue Moon’ DVD about the mouse-eating trout phenomenon that happens from time to time in New Zealand. According to Carl, including the ‘Thoughts of Fisherman Bob’ wasn’t originally in the plan. The DVD set was originally intended as primarily instructional fare, with Bob Wyatt taking the viewer through the rationale behind his favoured minimalist, impressionistic, quick-to-tie fly designs and then demonstrating how they should be tied. But Bob’s a kind of philosophical guy, so the filmmakers decided to add extra material that allowed Bob to speak about his understanding of, and approach to, fly fishing for wild trout wherever in the world they are to be found.

DVD 1 features tying stuff fished on the top, specifically dry flies, and emergers, and DVD 2 is devoted to stuff fished down in the water, namely nymphs and streamers. There are 21 flies in all, which Bob reckons should suffice for catching trout wherever they swim. For most of the time Bob is simply sitting at the vice in a halo of light, talking the viewer in stream-of-consciousness style through the materials and the various tying processes, in his soft Canadian accent. Bob doesn’t want hyper-realist fly tying accuracy, but rather is after a studied impressionistic scruffiness with inbuilt durability, involving the fewest possible materials. To me it’s all good stuff; having been nearly 40 years a fly fisher, like many anglers, I’ve come to conclude that simplicity works and that less is often more when it comes to fly design.

The only reservations I have with the films lie with the material outside their main remit. The fly tying stuff is exactly as it should be, and any doubts a reader of Bob’s book may have about tying his favoured patterns will be dispelled. But elsewhere we see tantalising glimpses of Bob casting and sometimes catching trout on lakes and rivers in the South Island of New Zealand (where the filmmakers live, and Bob spends much of the year) and we hear about trout feeding on willow grubs on a nearby river and the challenge they present, but we don’t actually get to see Bob taking you through a particular fishing scenario, which I’d really have liked to have seen. But then the reality of embarking on high-quality on-location filming to the standard the filmmakers built their reputation upon would have meant a completely different, more complex and costly operation altogether.

In summary, this pair of DVD’s will serve nicely as a fly tying reference work, but I was left wanting to see more of the application of Bob’s theories to real fishing situations. Coming next from Carl & Jeanie is another instructional DVD devoted to casting called ‘Casts that Catch Fish’. Carl is a certified Fly Fishing Federation Master Casting instructor, clips are up on You Tube and it, too, looks good.

Carl’s company ‘On The Fly’ have now found a UK distributor, and The DVD’s can be obtained in the UK from the likes of Sportfish, Farlows, Glasgow Angling, John Norris, Ted Carter, Foxons, Friendly Fisherman, Wharfedale Angling, Fly Fishing Tackle, Spiders Plus and Lakeland. Check their websites for prices.

[stevekale]

Casts that Catch Fish should be fantastic. Once in a Blue Moon showed how well that guy can cast.