I have been hooked on watching fishing shows since I was a little kid. To really illustrate this, let’s go back to winter, 1975. On a Saturday morning, my mom announced that the family was going to go to a movie, it was the new Mel Brooks film, “Young Frankenstein”. Well normally that would sound great to me, but I had scouted the TV Guide for weekend viewing, and saw that there were back-to-back fishing shows on that day, and I had
been looking more forward to watching them than I had looked forward to Christmas morning a few weeks prior. No way was I going to miss my heroes Virgil Ward and Roland Martin to see some movie. Well I got my way and was dropped off at my grandparents’ house to watch my beloved shows. I remember that old Virgil was fishing for white bass, I don’t remember where, but I’m sure he was catching them on a Beetle Spin or a marabou jig. Speaking of Virgil Ward, how many remember his catchy theme song? I still know the whole thing— “♪From the lakes of Northern Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico…♪” And there is no way I’m not watching until the very end to see his aquarium demonstration of the lures they used. My family returned from the movie and proceeded to mock me for missing out on a great movie to watch some dumb fishing shows. The mocking continued for decades, and to this day if you mention this movie to my mom she will bring this up. That put into play my longest running lifetime ban. I have never watched that movie, and I never will no matter how many people tell me how great it is.
Those early fishing shows weren’t that great, but to be honest a lot of the current ones aren’t much better. Nonetheless, on weekends in the winter when I typically don’t have anything going on I’ll tune in to a couple hours’ worth of mostly locally produced shows. Some are good, with anything done by the Lindners setting the gold standard. Most are pretty average, just checking the boxes, but some are just plain awful.
None are as memorable as a movie that was shown to my entire grade when I was in kindergarten. I can still remember my excitement when Mr. Suzuki announced that the movie about to be shown was about fishing. In the movie, a few guys were on a muskie fishing trip. They were unsuccessful [I can relate] so they switched it up and started fishing for smallmouth bass instead. At some point a muskie grabbed one of the smallmouth as they were bringing it in. I don’t remember any more details as it was over 50 years ago, but it is safe to say that the movie left a mark on me. I wonder if a version of this old movie, shot in the 60’s, still exists.
One of the best known of the local shows [when I say local, I mean “midwestern”] is John Gillespie’s Waters and Woods. Don’t worry I’m not going to slam his show too much. It is impressive that he has a new show virtually every week, and he lives the dream of getting paid to go fishing. Each week he has a local guide to take him out, sometimes his daughter accompanies him.
No secret that the key to the success of his show is his sponsors, and he definitely lets you know who they are. He is almost always fishing with lures from one of his sponsors, and always takes a break to eat some Johnsonville products. He used to be sponsored by Frabill Nets, not sure why he isn’t anymore, but I miss those days as you could count on him screaming “GET HIM IN THE FRABILL!!!” every time a fish was boatside.
While I don’t love the show, I find the predictability of it to be amusing. His excitability is unmatched, but maybe my favorite thing I’ve seen from him was a blooper from his show where he missed a muskie strike and proceeded to fill the air with a string of expletives that would have had Paul Fabian taking notes. The camera man thoughtfully panned to the others in the boat to catch their looks of shock. Poke around on Facebook and you might find it.
Next time his show is on, you can play “John Gillespie Bingo” using the bingo card here. You could also make it be a drinking game, but I don’t really recommend getting that drunk before 10 AM, even on a weekend.
Most other shows are what kids today would call “mid”—not great, just checking the boxes, using a bunch of B-roll footage, more or less following John G’s formula.
Some are really bad, like how did you get on TV?
And I know bad TV—I watch a few hours of wrestling every week, I watch The Masked Singer, and I have been known to watch public access shows, like this one where you get these two dudes reviewing snacks:
And this show, where a guy puts together jigsaw puzzles:
I even watch shows put out by a local square-dancing club. In these shows, the women all seem to be way into it, but the men…hit and miss. It’s fun to watch the men and try to pick out which guys are truly into it, which guys are tolerating it, and which guys are thinking about where they can get rid of a body.
Any of these are far more entertaining than most of what I see on Bally Sports on any given Saturday morning. [I’m looking at you, Skunk Boy]. Why do I continue to hate watch? I know… it’s because I’m jealous. A memorable moment of awesomely bad fishing video was on a different, short-lived and forgotten show that had the hosts ice fishing for bluegills. At some point they had a close-up, slo-mo shot of the host releasing a seven-inch bluegill back into the icy water while John Williams type music played to add to the drama. My daughter happened to be walking by, she even laughed at how ridiculous it was. “Wow, you let a sunfish go. Awesome”. If you’re getting called out by a ten year old girl, it’s time to rethink your business plan.
Another thing, these TV fishing guys are supposed to be experienced, so why do so many act like a teenage girl that just spotted Harry Styles at a Starbucks every time they hook a fish? Calm down fellas, act like you’ve been there before. This one guy who does a muskie show comes unglued every time they hook one, scrambling around to get a different camera going and still scoop the fish in the net in less than 10 seconds. And [side rant] speaking of muskie fishing, if you are an experienced angler you don’t need to measure a 37 incher—just make a good guess and get the fish back in the water! 
I didn’t set out here to take a giant shit on all of these shows, but it does seem like the bad content outweighs the good. One good episode I saw recently was the Lund Boats TV show [produced by the Lindners]. They were on a trip in Canada. This fishing was good, of course, lots of pike and lake trout, and the production values were top notch. No one said anything stupid, no one spazzed when they hooked a fish, and none of the anglers had a radio face. What I liked best was the shore lunch they made. It was lake trout cooked on a fire. I’ve eaten my share of lake trout cooked this way, I could taste it just by watching. But they somehow had no silverware, so they ate their fish as well as baked beans using spoons for utensils. As in Five-of -Diamonds type spoons. I liked this because I once had this same scenario play out when I was guiding in Alaska when we didn’t have silverware in the lunch box. At the end of the program one of the guys had his self-inflating life vest inflate for no reason while they were landing a fish. That’s good stuff.
When criticizing these shows, I have to remind myself that awful as I often find them, most are still better than my fishing show, which consists of mostly average videos on YouTube. Check out my channel, maybe I can get my view counts into triple digits:
Or, check out “Flyfishing for Smallmouth Bass”, a “straight to DVD” video I made with my friends Pete and Chris. Doesn’t seem possible that it was 20 years ago that we made this. I’m my biggest critic, and I say considering what we knew and what we had to work with it turned out pretty good, even though we apparently used a potato for a camera. This was before YouTube was a thing, but you can see it there now. I don’t expect anyone to sit through it all, but at least check out the awesome intro:
Like most people I now get most of my fishing content on YouTube. There is no end to what is out there. Some is well done and entertaining but a lot of it is crap. But truth be told, I don’t even care much about what actually gets caught–the number one thing I am doing while watching is trying to figure out the spot. It has become somewhat of an obsession. This is especially true with videos shot around here, but even if the host is fishing somewhere I know I will never be and fishing for fish I don’t care about, if I see a bridge, a boat landing, or a water tower I am compelled to figure out where he is, and I will spend an hour or more on google Earth to do it.
The other day I was watching one of the “spinner fishing for trout” guys. This particular spinner guy [who has about 500 videos of him doing this] makes it a point to keep his spots a secret, which is a good idea. I can still sometimes figure it out. One of the times that I was unsuccessfully trying to home in on which creek he was on, the only clue was a bridge that was briefly shown. But then later on there was a scene where he is fishing near a barn that had “God Bless America” written on it. A google image search for “God Bless America Barn Wisconsin” gave me the result I was looking for—a picture of that very barn and the town it was near. It then took 5 seconds on google maps to find the exact spot where I’m sure that I too can catch 8-inch brook trout on spinners. I was so proud of myself. I know, get a life Chris.
Enough with the bad…here are some YouTube channels that won’t disappoint:
Uncut Angling—This guy is well known for his videos of him fishing around Manitoba. There is probably no one better at creating original fishing videos that don’t follow the traditional script of how these things usually go. Virtually all his content is great but a few of my favorites are “Fidget Spinner Muskie”, “Pike Smash Youtube Play Button”, and “Someone I Used to Know”, which is the strangest yet most awesome fishing video ever made.
Darcizzle—Pretty blonde chick in a bikini catches awesome fish in Florida. How can you go wrong with this? There are other “hot chick catches fish” channels out there, but what brings me back to Darcy is her fish cleaning videos. Watching her turn a wahoo, tuna, cobia, or other catch-of-the-day into fillets ready for the grill is a thing of beauty. Then watch her dufus husband cook the day’s catch.
Bindy Vang—Just found this guy. Good content of mostly local bass fishing. He catches some really big bass, and I like that I can usually figure out where he is fishing on local waters. He could probably cut back on the usage of “Bro” by about 80 percent though.
Lost Lakes—Not really a fishing channel, but Jon takes you along on canoe camping trips through the backcountry of Ontario. Great scenery, great camera work [especially considering he is usually alone], great narration. And he catches fish along the way.