Hollywood catches snag trying to depict fishing

by Bishfish on April 15, 2006

I was reading a magazine article about some of the ‘tricks’ used to portray fishing in the film of ‘A River Runs Through It’ which bought back some memories of a funny situation I was party to 20 years ago.

I was hired by a Japanese TV commercial film company as fishing technical advisor for a shoot they were doing here in New Zealand. Part of that shoot was a scene where the actor hooks and lands a huge trout. The film crew had chosen a small, beautiful lake, with one small thing missing – there were no trout in it.

Not a problem when money seemed of little hindrance – we arranged for 6 big fish to be shipped from a hatchery in a large aerated tank. What fish they were too – all well over 4.5kg (10lbs.). I was very envious that the actor would get to play these fish.

OK so the fish were sorted, but the next tiny problem was the fact that the actor had never held a fishing rod in his life. So with some camera angle trickery we got shots of the actor ‘casting’, most of which was my arm doing the actual work. This was bit off a trick in itself, the actor being left-handed and me not.

Now it was time to bring on the fish. When we opened the tank and tried to net one, the fish went crazy but finally we netted one. I hooked it, and gently released the fish into the lake, with strict instructions to the actor on what to do when the fish took off.

I put the fish in the water, it swam a metre or two, and then just sat there on the bottom, unmoving. Throwing rocks, wading out and nudging the fish did nothing, it would not move. Same thing with fish two, three and four.

Finally the fifth fish did what trout are supposed to do and bolted for the deep part of the lake. Unfortunately the actor did not do what he was supposed to do, and clamped down on the reel and pulled the hook out.

The other four fish were still in plain view, so we tried to net one, which of course woke them all up and away they shot leaving just puffs of mud behind them.

So we resorted to the old but well proven trick of attaching a small bucket to the line and the actor fought that. We netted the last fish for the proud angler to hold up to the camera, and then released the fish, who like fish number five bolted for the deep. That was that. I was sent a CD of the commercial some months later and it would be hard to tell the whole thing was not for real.

pixel Hollywood catches snag trying to depict fishing

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  1. Trout ‘dumber than goldfish’

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