How Far Would You Go to Watch a Movie???
Some people follow Phish. I mean religiously follow them. They travel concert to concert on a Greatful Dead-esque tour just to see the band. Well, I follow fish too… just a different kind. So how far would I go to watch a movie? Well if it’s the Fly Fishing Film Tour the answer is 1625 miles.
The first year I saw the Fly Fishing Film Tour it didn’t come east of the Mississippi (at least not as far as I know. Please don’t tell me if I am wrong). Now, some 14 years later, it is seen in more than 190 cities in eight different countries! A fly fishing partner of my youth was living in Alaska and stumbled upon it fourteen years ago. “I’m telling you,” he said “you HAVE to see this movie.” Well, I was mid-divorce with wanderlust as bad as ever, so I hopped on a plane to Bozeman, Montana, a town in competition only with Asheville, NC, Italy, and Ireland on the list of places I am convinced I would move, watched the movie, and flew home. It was life changing, and I vowed never to miss it again.
What is the Fly Fishing Film Tour?
Well the organizers describe it as “The original and preeminent exhibition of fly fishing cinema” and say “The F3T is a one of a kind experience.” That it is. In reality it’s more. In the north it is a panacea for frosted days of early darkness spent sucking the ice out of the guides on your fly rod. A series of short adventure fly fishing films, divided by an intermission, the Fly Fishing Film Tour is one of the pieces of cultural ephemera that unite those of us who love to hold a rod in our hand in waters all over the earth.
Increasingly less “trouty” and more far flung, it is 3FT that placed Kamchatka on my fishing bucket list. (Yes, fly fishing has its OWN bucket list.) It was the first road trip alone with my youngest son who I took to the Alexandria Draft House in Alexandria, Virginia, to see the show. It was the road trip to the Highland Brewery in Asheville, NC, on my birthday when one of my best friends had just started texting her now husband, a fellow fly fisherman. Years later I would return there with them both to see it again, sitting outside eating empanadas and drinking beer between turns casting into a baby pool before the show. And it was a solo trip to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, last year to fish the Yellow Breeches and see the movie I missed at WVU when it was snowed out and rescheduled to a date when I was not available.
Some years, like this year, I plan to see it twice. I always try to see it in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, as my insurance policy against missing it. This year our Trout Unlimited Chapter, the P. Pendleton Kennedy Chapter, is considering bringing it to Morgantown as well. When details of the date are available I will post those in the comments below, but do yourself a favor if you are in Southwestern Pennsylvania or North Central West Virginia… or heck, even in Bozeman, Montana, and just plan to come. For now you should plan to join us for the P. Pendleton Kennedy Chapter of Trout Unlimited Annual Dinner on Friday, March 20, 2020, at Atria’s in Morgantown. West Virginia sportsmen are a generous lot, and that auction promises to be lucrative in addition to supporting a great cause. Come out and join us. I’ll be the one near the cash bar with the Gin and Tonic.