The Fly Fishing Film Tour comes to the Ritz
Thursday night the 20th Annual Fly Fishing Film Tour came to the Historic Ritz Theatre in downtown Brunswick, and I went. The tour travels the country every year with a reel of the best fly fishing films of the season, and our stop was hosted by On The Fly Outfitters, with the proceeds going to the Georgia Saltwater Anglers Association.
The evening started at the shop with a fly tying demo by Capt. William Cochran and a pizza party from Fox's Pizza. By the time the doors opened at the Ritz at 5:30, the sun was going down orange on the brick, the old sign was lit over the striped awning, and the cars were lined up along the street. Inside, Little Zooks was running the lobby bar, On The Fly had its table set up by the door with raffle tickets and gear, and the red carpet was crowded with vented fishing shirts and faded ball caps. The films ran from six to eight-thirty, and afterward everybody walked over to Silver Bluff Brewery for an after party with Owen Plant playing in the beer garden.
That is the event. Now for the people in it, which takes a little more explaining.
Somewhere back in the dark, a man in a borrowed hide looked into a river, saw something move, and wondered if it tasted good. It did, so he worked out a sharp stick, then a net, then a hook, and that was the end of the problem. Dinner on the fire. We have spent the thousands of years since making it harder.
Everyone in that lobby has chosen the least efficient way to catch a fish anyone has thought of, and most of us spend our free time looking for ways to make it worse.
The fly weighs almost nothing, so you cannot throw it. You throw the line instead and the fly comes along for the ride. The fly itself is a hook dressed in feathers and fur to look like whatever the fish is eating that week. Get it wrong and the fish ignores you. Get it right and the fish may ignore you anyway, because the leader was too thick, or the fly dragged, or your shadow crossed the water, or it is a fish and does not owe you anything. And if all of that goes your way, most of us let it go.
You know the saying. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Well, that is not usually how this group gets it done. Teach a man to fly fish and he puts it back, then shares the fly pattern with his buddy so the buddy can catch the same fish next week and put it back too.
It does not stop there, of course. Sooner or later the store-bought flies are not quite right, so he starts tying his own, and then the store-bought rods are not quite right either, so he starts building those. I have built more than a hundred. My wife has counted, and she has opinions about the closets. None of this makes sense if the goal is dinner, but nobody in that lobby was confused about the goal.
What surprises people is how friendly the crowd is. Looking around the room I saw everyone from guys in their twenties to folks in their late seventies, and that range tells you something. This is an affliction that sets in young or late and then lasts the rest of your life, and as far as I can tell it makes the life better. Strangers talk to each other. Somebody will hand you a fly out of his own box. And there is always a gentle effort underway to convert the sinners, by which I mean bait fishermen. We try very hard not to judge. Most of us were bait fishermen once, and some of us still keep a can of worms in the garage we do not talk about. But if you mention you like to fish, someone in that room is going to invite you to try it on the fly, and he is going to mean it.
I bought raffle tickets, naturally. Fly fishermen will happily buy a chance at gear they already own three of, and I say that as a man currently trying to give away a closet full of rods.
Then the lights went down, and for two and a half hours I watched other people fish in places I may never see, for fish I now very much want to catch. The strange part is that nobody walks out of those films discouraged. You watch someone land a fish at the far end of the earth and you do not think, I will never do that. You think, maybe next year. Then you think, I need a different line.
Afterward at Silver Bluff I am told the conversation was mostly about knots. I believe it.
None of this happens without On The Fly Outfitters, which has been the local temple for the afflicted since 2017. The shop sits at 1501 Newcastle Street, and it is where we go for supplies, absolution, and someone patient enough to hear about the redfish that got away. They will gear you up and then sell you a fly fishing class, a guided charter, a lesson in tying saltwater flies, or a falconry hunt. Yes, falconry. A fly shop that also handles birds of prey, and if you need one fact to understand the clientele, there it is. More than that, they do what a good shop is for, which is gather people. Monthly events, a fly fishing festival, and now a film night that has become a fixture. A sport this small survives because places like that keep the door open and the coffee on.
And it is a small sport, getting smaller. It is expensive and slow, and it takes years to do badly before you can do it well. Casting is timing more than strength, and timing has to be learned in the arm. I can spend a whole day reading water, picking flies, fixing knots, and losing the one fish that mattered, and still come home happy. I have done it more times than I can count.
That is the part that is hard to explain to anyone outside the room. The difficulty is the point. Anyone can catch a fish, but doing it with a few feathers and a line laid down without a ripple is a craft, and a craft pays back attention. The river does not care about your excuses, which makes it an honest teacher. You get better slowly, and getting better turns out to be the reward.
The conservation runs just as deep, and it is not something anyone has to be talked into. Spend enough years on the water and you start to see it change. A creek silts in. A flat that used to hold fish goes quiet. The marsh gets a little thinner. Fly fishermen notice because noticing is most of the sport. So we crush our barbs, keep the fish in the water, wet our hands before we touch one, and send it back to be caught again by somebody else, maybe the buddy with the borrowed fly pattern. We also put money where the water is. Without clean water there are no fish, and without fish there is nothing left to be inefficient about. Thursday's proceeds went to the Georgia Saltwater Anglers Association and the work of keeping this coast worth fishing for the next fellow in his twenties who walks into that lobby.
So if any of this makes you curious, I am sorry to say you are already in trouble. Walk into the shop on Newcastle Street and tell them you are just looking.
Nobody believed me the first time either.