Published Jul 31. 2011 - 12 years ago
Updated or edited Dec 14. 2016

Video review: Musky Country

Zero 2 Hero

"A different class of fish here!" as Brad Bohen says during his fighting the world record musky (any tippet, so it's large!). And a different class of anglers I say. A nice video portrait of "the musky tribe".


Info
Author: 
Robert Thompson
Publisher: 
Thirdyearflyfisher
Publishing year: 
2011
Minutes: 
49+60
Price: 
35.00
US$ shipped

Reviewed by: 

This is in essence a portrait of two anglers telling about their relation to the toothy musky. Pike bums if I ever saw a couple. Listening to them tell about their passion is a different angle to pike or musky fishing than most videos take. Oftentimes the pike appeals to film action, takes splashing, big teeth and anglers presenting large fish to the camera. This video take the person-centric approach, and that's a good thing.

We're in Wisconsin and we follow anglers Brad Bohen and Brian Porter chatting and fishing. Robert Thompson, the man behind the camera, thanks them in the end with the words "Thanks for letting me into your world", and we as spectators can do the same, because through some great interviews and some very nice fishing action, we get an insight into the lives of two musky bums, people whose fishing life (or maybe their whole life?) seems to evolve around fishing for musky.
We follow them lazily preparing for fishing, sitting in the local diner talking about their life and of course on the water, drifting lakes and quiet parts of the river casting enormous flies for these greedy fish. There's lots of action, but it's still the people that leave the deepest marks when you've seen the video.
And there's a lot of great lumps of gold and one-liners coming from the two guys. My absolute favorite comes from Brad Bohen as he's asked: "What do you do when the water comes down?". He pauses and laughs for a second and replies "Porn!". How's that for an answer?!
I love seeing people like this portrayed. They are real people. Guys you wanna go fishing with and a lot like the ones I hang around when I fish.

If you're into pike or musky fishing you'll enjoy the ride with these two guys, "the musky tribe" as they were dubbed by Tom Bie and Drake Magazine. In their own words they are almost religious about it, and we follow them fishing.
Brad Bohen says during his fighting the world record musky (any tippet, so it's large!): "A different class of fish here!", and indeed it is. 46 inches or 117 centimeters. But it's obviously also a different class of fishermen, and they get portrayed as good as it can be done here.
You will not hear a word about gear, tippets or even flies during the main video. These guys fish, and don't spend time teaching us how.
There's a lot of extra material, and a whole little DVD in itself in the "Twin Fork float", which is a 20 minute long video showing a single trip. And here you actually do get some fishing tips. You will also find a small sequence about bass and panfish, as well as two long fly philosophy and fly tying sequences adding up to an hour of extra material to the 49 minute long main feature, so you certainly do get some hands on information too.

The whole video has a lot of attitude as you would put if if you were trying to say in a nice way that some person is actually a slightly annoying, while still sounding positive. There's attitude in the people, their approach to fishing and not least the way the video is produced.
It's grungy and has all the effects you can dig out of a video editing program: scratches, camera shake, color deterioration, desaturation, fuzziness, stop motion, slow and whatnot.
Most sequences are really nice and uses the full quality of the modern media, and are a joy to watch. The production and cinematography is really excellent in long periods.
Why we have to see all these quality shifts underway, I don't know. I know I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon fighting the MTV-trend here, but I still insist. Especially in a video like this where the whole content is grungy from the outset: the locations, the people and the fishing. No need to make it more edgy. Let the people in the video speak and act as they do, and they leave a very nice impression of the anarchistic kind of life they are leading. One odd thing is that their swearing is beeped out! If I heard them swear it would leave a far deeper impression than some strange light shift or out of focus effect.

But nevertheless we're talking an excellent video here about a kind of fishing we don't see that often, and not least letting us get very close to the people doing it.


Comments

Hi, For anyone i...

Hi,

For anyone interested, this DVD is now available to buy in mainland Europe via ADH fishing.

I'm a big fan so I contacted the director Robert Thompson about finding a retailer in Europe for his DVD's. He was all for it so i contacted some retailers and ADH were happy to offer them. So now you can get them in Europe in 2 days instead of 2 weeks from the U.S. :o)

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