Making TV and Magazine Fishing Features

You’ve watched the programmes, read the magazines, bought the newspapers. You’re an average sort of angler, getting out every couple of weeks on your local waters, catching a few fish, even the odd decent one. Yet, seemingly every time these “stars” go out they catch great big specimens, often from waters hundreds of miles from home. Is it all smoke and mirrors? Or are they just bloody good at catching fish despite the extra pressure of performing for the camera? Bumblebee is going to delve deep, and perhaps uncover some of the little secrets that help the stars catch fish when the camera is running and results are needed, and hopefully help you to catch more fish as well.

Superstar John Wilson signing autographs at the NEC

Planning, Planning, Planning.
Usually in angling the first rule is location as far as catching fish is concerned but for the stars just turning up at a strange venue that may be pushing their luck a bit too far. There are occasions when a very good angler can turn up at a strange venue and triumph but when a TV crew is involved, perhaps with an overnight stay, then much more is required. This planning may take place as much as a year or more in advance. The angling to be filmed may only be possible at certain times of the year and in certain conditions.

The first thing to check out is that the venue selected is actually capable of producing the goods. Is it just fisherman’s tales? Or did the venue produce a one-off monster, never to be repeated? Or is the venue good enough to produce the goods? Beware of old form. Venues change over the years and fishing for fish that died years ago is a non-starter.

So the star needs to cultivate a network of reliable contacts, ones that can get access to top class waters, and that know it intimately enough to pin-point the best fish, tactics, swims and conditions. With a local expert to point the way, a huge amount of time can be saved in determining exactly where and how to fish. Tactics can be quickly refined and results made more likely. It is certainly much harder to turn up blind on a strange stretch of river, miles from home, and expect outstanding results. So the tip from the professionals is do your homework and listen to the local experts.

Even the best can get caught out. I remember bumping into John Wilson in a Dorset pub after he’d had a very dour day trying to catch grayling. Whatever possessed him to believe that the grayling would want to feed in 80 degrees in July I don’t know, for he ended up with an eel or two, and a jack pike; hardly what was planned, for it didn’t make a great program.

Got the swim
Anyone that has tried to get a really good swim on a popular fishery like the Royalty at the height of the season must wonder how the stars seem to have got them without the opening time dash. There’s no secret at all here. It was reserved, sometimes to the chagrin of the fee-paying club members. That man Wilson again (sorry John, I’m not picking on you, honest) found the boot on the other foot when autumn grayling fishing on the Dorset Frome (yes, he returned at the right time of year) to find a club member in ‘his’ swim. Yet, for once, the club member was in the right, having paid for his fishing, and the club secretary would have had no right to boot the club member off.

This reserving of swims is often taken further, especially for a TV programme, with the chosen swim closed for up to a week beforehand. For mere mortals it’s a case of getting there first.

Got the Gear and Bait
If you struggle along with a ten-year old float rod and a battered feeder rod your guess that the star has access to every type of rod and reel under the sun is close to the mark. The star may appear to travel light but he’s made sure that he’s got exactly the right gear for this trip. Again, he’s done his homework; talked it through with his local contacts and figured out exactly what is required. Few top anglers don’t have some sort of tie-up with tackle companies, and this helps. But in any case the sort of angler that gets to this level is usually both fanatical and vastly experienced, and therefore likely to spend a fortune on tackle.

Angling star Bob James

As for sponsorship or consultancy, the companies benefit from both expert advice and a degree of product placement. There is a fine line drawn at this point, especially in articles, between honestly describing what you use, something that many anglers want to know, and blatant product plugging. I suspect that most readers can easily spot the difference. When every bit of gear happens to be from the angler’s own company, it is time for the editor to have a quiet word in his ear about buying advertising space! Having got this far, the star doesn’t turn up with a pint of old maggots and hope. He will have the best bait and plenty of it, with a variety to fall back on.

Got the skill
It may look easy but these guys can really fish. And not just one method either. Floatfishing, legering, even fly-fishing; these guys can cut the mustard. Accurate casting, skilful trotting, careful feeding coupled with vast experience in understanding how to catch big fish regularly, and more importantly to order, make the stars formidable fish catchers. In a way, this actually makes it more difficult for them to be credible. The experts of this world, such as Magic Marsden and Rontroversial Clay, don’t have a problem with this when they read a feature because they’ve done it so many times themselves, have the requisite skills, and know that the feature writers and TV presenters are equally skilled. But Mr. Average, with no exposure to these levels of expertise, cannot always conceive of skill levels in angling many times better than average.

At this point, the average angler may start to concoct dubious theories about how the fish were caught. The fish were hooked on, out of sight of camera, or the fish in the feature were caught by someone else, or in these days of digital manipulation who knows what trickery might entail. Once in a blue moon, the stars do resort to such skulduggery, yet by far the majority of what you see is more or less what happened. Accept that the stars have special skills, and you are halfway to seeing how you can improve your own fishing skills quite dramatically by thinking about what the stars are actually doing and why.

Stitching together the results
Things don’t always go entirely to plan. TV, in particular, needs action. Sometimes, having a good backup for when the fishing is flat does this. It might involve a switch of tactics, even species or venue. But because getting the results in the can does take a long time, the boring bits can be edited out. The downside to this is that a short TV program can make what is actually difficult and slow fishing look ludicrously easy. I’ve seen anglers get a barbel first trot on TV yet this is something that has only ever happened to me once and suggests that this was not what happened – or did it?

Outtakes can get rid of botched casts and tangles, and the many long periods of inactivity. This last must be essential for filming static carp fishing! Certainly, understand that what you are watching is TV, and therefore it may be contrived to entertain rather than a forensic documentary. Good camera work and editing often gives an idealistic view of what is really a less than halcyon scene. Those same cameras can make the actual catching of fish much more difficult as demonstrated by Magic Marsden’s experience of trying to catch chub with a whacking great scaffold platform complete with cameraman in mid-stream on the Severn.

The Washouts
With the best will in the world no one can have total control of the elements. Sudden floods, heat waves, frosts, a complete failure to locate the fish, whatever the reason, some allowance must be made by those trying to put together features and TV programmes that sometimes the end reason is nothing worth filming or writing about. It’s a case of try, try again until the result is in the bag.

No chance a complete blanker like Bumblebee would ever make a TV program!

Who’d be a star? It must have its advantages; you get to fish the best stretches, asked to try out new tackle, and some glory to boot. It’s a hard life. If only I knew how to catch some big fish (or any fish) to order (and had the good looks) I’d join ’em.