A second opinion
By Michael Smith AKA Rybolov
One October weekend when I lived in Oregon, I fished Davis Lake on the East side of the Cascades. I hooked so many 17-inch kokanee from my float tube in one day that my arms hurt and I had to teach myself to cast with my left hand. Lesson of the day is that it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
I saw the Trout Bum Diaries Vol 1 on the
Global Flyfisher Reading bookshelf list. Something about the cover caught my eye. I watched
the 5-minute trailer on their site and realized that I had found a new kind of flyfishing video--what I now refer to as "fish porn". I even took the trailer and showed it to the guys at work.
$25 and a couple of days later, my DVD arrived in the mail. I eagerly popped it into my player and rediscovered what I found out 5 years ago... too much of a good thing can be bad for you.
The DVD is packed full of fish--huge fish, and lots of them. I kept thinking back to the label of "fish porn" and realizing that the porn label might be very apropos. The fishing that Angler's Exploration Group does is similar to the fishing that normal people do, only it's gaudy, overdone, and somehow surreal. Not that it isn't appealing, however.
The AEG do fishing like I do, only just a hair more gonzo. I have no problem sleeping on a picnic table at a campground alongside Davis Lake and having to chisel ice off of my wading boots and float tube in the morning. I could easily see myself making a guest appearance on a future AEG feature. Maybe I'll be Rybolov the half-Russian, half-cutthroat who teaches the gang how to order beer in far-off places such as Kamchatka.
Having grown up watching Warren Miller movies, the narrative style works well for me. It's not for everybody, though. I could see how if you were Norman McLean's father, you might have a coronary on the spot to see 20-somethings who speak fluent "dude" skittering #4/0 hair mice over Southern hemisphere spring creeks to huge browns.
If you read that last sentence and thought. "Well, at least it's a DRY fly," then this DVD might be for you.
Shooting a scene for the video. Photo by AEG. 
