Why Fly Fishing

Product Description

Why Fly Fishing is a 31-minute DVD created to explain and share the grace of this age-old sport. As a sport, fly fishing has a rich history with many of its own icons. Some people are not aware that the passion for fly fishing among its participants easily equals or surpasses even the most fanatical "team sport" (i.e. football, baseball, basketball). Fly fishing is an individual event with a level playing field that welcomes all comers. Everyone enters as a beginner, there are no age limits and progress is measured by self-satisfaction.

This is a DVD every dedicated fly fisher should own, as well as beginners and even people who might be curious about why practitioners are so dedicated. Not only does it make fly fishers feel good about what they love, but, for the first time, they have a beautiful film that explains to non-fly fishing friends and family why the sport is so seductive. It shows, as words alone never could, why fly fishers become "low-level fanatics" (John Gierach's words) and behave the way they do.

All profits from Why Fly Fishing DVD sales go directly towards the American Museum of Fly Fishing to help further the understanding of and appreciation for the history and traditions of the sport of fly fishing by preserving, displaying, studying and interpreting the artifacts, art and literature of the sport.

"By exploring the many facets of the sport -- the athletic, the intellectual, the scientific and the artistic -- this film shows the deep satisfaction and fun anglers experience. All this is seen through the eyes of some of fly fishing's foremost practitioners -- Joan Wulff, Nick Lyons, James Prosek, Flip Pallot, John Gierach, the Revel brothers, Keith Fulsher and Diana Rudolph. This film is also a great way to introduce the sport to others whom fly fishers hope will now understand this obsession and who then might become interested and participants themselves. It also helps everyone truly appreciate why the love for it is so strong."
--Gardner Grant, Trustee of the American Museum of Fly Fishing

Review

. . . Why Fly Fishing must be the most competent, professionally produced piece of fly-fishing film since Robert Redford was handed three Academy Award nominations.

The idea for the film came from an executive at the Yale Peabody Museum, who when visiting the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont, dared to ask the obvious: Why fly fishing? Gardner Grant, a trustee of the museum and former director of Trout Unlimited, wondered Why indeed? Jeffrey Pill, with a long history of success in the film and television industry, including his current position as executive producer, director and writer of a series of documentary outdoor programs for Miracle Productions, was tasked to answer the question.

The economical, brilliantly compiled result begins with angling icon Flip Pallot attempting to express the reasons he first fell in love with the sport and how it manages to grow within its devotees from a modest ambition to unrelenting passion. "Fly-fishing has no season," he says. "Fly-fishing has no geography."

Celebrated author John Gierach goes a step further, noting the sport's "insidious nature." You can come to fly-fishing from any direction in life, and go anywhere with it, both seem to say, and then, as Gierach notes, "Thirty years later, you wake up and find out you re still learning."

Accompanied by a beautiful, wholly appropriate score, the film moves seamlessly between brief scenes on the water and a range of personal interviews conducted with some of the sport's leading personalities. Joan Wulff, the so-called first lady of fly-fishing, expounds upon the grace of casting. Nick Lyons highlights angling's literary appeal, which has done much to preserve the traditions that serve as headwaters for the sport. And before it all gets too heavy, too proud of itself -- always a danger when the topic is fly-fishing -- there's Gierach again to provide some of his patented levity: "There's something about catching small fish on hugely expensive tackle that sort of keeps you humble."

Humility, in the end, might be the film's greatest quality, for while it treats the subject seriously, there is none of the patronizing high-mindedness that occasionally marks these ventures. Instead it simply lets the sport, and a few people who ve clearly fallen in love with it, do all the talking.

--Big Sky Journal Magazine
by Troy Letherman

We were recently treated to a copy of the new film Why Fly Fishing funded by the American Museum of Fly Fishing and created and produced by Jeffrey Pill (the former senior producer of 20/20 and creator of Successful Fly Fishing Strategies, The Art of Spey Casting and Joan Wulff's Dynamics of Fly Casting) and were frankly blown away by the quality of the production and the care with which its content was assembled. The 31-minute DVD, introduced by former FFF president and Trout Unlimited director Gardner Grant (who was a generous contributor to the project), includes the first filmed interview with John Gierach, who talks from his office ("What I like about fly fishing is its insidious nature") and catches a few fish. Joan Wulff puts the sport in perspective by explaining its essentials and instructing a young girl on casting, while Flip Pallot, Keith Fulsher, Diana Rudolph, the Revel Brothers, and James Prosek offer personal insights on how fly fishing has shaped their lives. There's also a great segment with Nick Lyons noting the places of McGuane, Gierach and other authors in the literature.

If you are looking for something to inspire you to pick up a rod and get a jump start on a new season, this DVD is it. We'd also highly recommend it as a gift for anyone who might consider fly fishing, since it offers clear, succinct insight into why so many fly fishers become enraptured with the sport.

--Midcurrent.com (International Webzine)
by Marshall Cutchin

. . . Why Fly Fishing is a brilliant new 31-minute video produced by Jeffrey M. Pill's Miracle Productions. Jeff is an avid fly fisher. His professional credits include everything from Senior Producer at 20/20, the ABC News Magazine, to Co-Producer and Director of the CBS Special Mysteries of the Great Pyramids with Omar Sharif. Pill's business card reads, "If it's great, it's a Miracle!" Why Fly Fishing is both. It is the most eloquent short film ever done that goes right to the heart of why we fish. And its creation is indeed a minor miracle.

The vital idea was planted when a large exhibit titled "Seeing Wonders: The Nature of Fly Fishing" was being assembled from displays at the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont, for a five-month run at the Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut. An executive from the Peabody drove to Manchester to see how things were progressing. "Wonderful," she thought of the rich assemblage of memorabilia, and then added aloud, "But why fly fishing?" "Good question," replied Gardner Grant, long-time Trustee of the AMFF and one of the great and extraordinarily modest and behind-the-scene benefactors of not only the preservation of fly fishing's past but also the conservation of fishery resources to ensure its future. Grant decided to raise the money to make a film and then he contacted Pill.

To get out the film Pill envisioned within a matter of months was asking for near-impossible performances from a diverse cast of characters scattered throughout the country, not to mention warp-speed editing. First he turned to his friend and colleague, Bob Hanna, to direct the photography. A year earlier, Hanna had been hit by a fast-moving car and thrown 100 feet in the air, breaking a leg badly in two places. Complications in healing forced the leg to be re-broken and re-set. Hanna would do it using a cane to get around and ski poles on the streamside slopes. Pill called on Joan Wulff to narrate loosely and to demonstrate the magic and mechanics of fly casting: "And the [near weight-less] fly just goes along as a passenger but, believe me, it s a lot easier with a rod!" He asked Nick Lyons to talk about the importance of literature ("All the best writing about fly fishing is as much about life..."); James Prosek to discuss art ("Our relationship to Nature is really about being immersed in it and observing the things that are going on around us."); and John Gierach about the meaning of it all ("What I like about fly fishing is its insidious nature ...").

You deserve to own this DVD. Better still, order several copies: One for your neglected and seasonally abandoned spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend; your kids whose lives are being alarmingly consumed by the tyranny of video games or the perverse unreality of "reality TV"; or your boss who wonders why you're AWOL on sun-drenched May days when some acquaintances called the Hendricksons have flown in.

--Fish & Fly Magazine
by Thomas R. Pero, Editor and Publisher