The Underground Saves Fly Fishing (Again). This Time, With Television

Because my earlier (and selfless) attempts to save fly fishing by creating The Next Big Fly Fishing Movie went nowhere, I’m shifting my fly fishing industry resuscitation attempts to the small screen.

First, let’s face facts; fly fishing’s never making it to the sporting major leagues if the best broadcast media we can offer is a handful of soporific “celebrity fly fishing” and lame “how-to” shows.

Hell, even when a couple of decent shows do find their way to the airwaves, they lack the necessary popular media ingredients needed to make fly fishing seem cool again (remember, we’re essentially people wearing rubber pants standing in rivers).

No sex. No conflict. No bad guys.

No, fly fishing isn’t going to be saved by wind-blown flower closeups while a folk guitarist drones away in the background.

It needs edge. It needs a lifestyle. It needs what only a fictional, dramatic television series can deliver.

In short, fly fishing needs the Underground’s Media Vision. It needs:

Speywatch

You’re already nodding. The hell with documentary fly fishing. In this surefire winner, hot (and hunky) “speywatch” babes careen around the Northwest’s best steelhead rivers, saving hapless fly fishermen from certain drowning.

Like the original Baywatch series, our lifesaving bimbos (and mimbos for the female demographic) will perform their duties clad in wholly unsupportive bathing suits while apparently under the influence of ice cubes.

Sure, it’s hokey, but Baywatch made David Hasselhoff rich, and frankly, I’m fine with early retirement.

And besides – given the horrifically low-quality scripts of the original series – Underground Productions can take Speywatch to the small screen without the crippling expense of professional writers.

Hell, we won’t even have to pay for professional actors (though we’d consider offering a plastic surgeon a staff position).

After all, when the plot slows or the acting becomes downright untenable, we simply cut away to a Stacked Trained Lifesaving Professional running in slow motion down a sandbar, and all our plot inconsistencies and acting sins simply fade away (see, you’re smiling – it’s happening to you right now).

If it’s one thing we’re covering here at Underground Productions, it’s all the angles.

Lost Again

The original Lost TV series left its millions of viewers completely deflated by its last episode, so we plan to step into the breach by offering a dramatic fly fishing version – Lost Again in Bonefish Territory.

The idea is simple; a planeload of fly fishermen plummet out of the sky, crash-landing on a mysterious island surrounded by bonefish flats.

Populated by groups of guides who are both wholly evil (easy to find) and good (much less believable), the show swings wildly between the bizarre and really bizarre.

People just seem to eat that shit up.

After milking the wholly ridiculous idea for every cent, we’ll wind up the series with an episode suggesting the whole thing was simply a travel agency’s bonefish junket for bloggers, and since bloggers are involved, everyone’s going to hell anyway.

There’s your nice, neat package. Frankly, it’s genius (cue the cash registers).

Sesame Riffle

Only a fool would ignore the lucrative children’s market, and the Underground’s no fool.

Sesame Riffle would be heavily populated with fun loving, adorable – and thoroughly licensable – characters.

Sure, we’d teach kids all about nature stuff (“today’s show brought to you by the green rockworm”), but Sesame Riffle would be primarily aimed at fly fishing parents.

The genius is this: parents get to feel both entertained and snobbish about watching “educational” programming with their kids.

Sure, it’s a niche, but there’s money in niches – especially once we follow Sesame Riffle with sure-fire versions like Sesame Deer Stand, Sesame Pit Stop, etc.

Law & Order, Wild Game Unit

Has any television franchise made more money than Law & Order?

Get ready to add another zero to the bottom line, Undergrounders. This one’s a license to print money.

Nasty, contemptible people do bad things. Attractive people try to catch them.

Throw in a few legal plot twists – and that famous double-chord sound effect – and you’ve pretty much got a show, which in this case takes place in the outdoors in the presence of poachers, nymphers and other criminals.

And consider this; the original shows only concerned themselves with people, and most of us can barely stand other people. In this version, we’re working with hugely sympathetic (and monstrously cuddly) wildlife as our aggrieved parties.

The mind, frankly, boggles.

I’ve Done My Part

Frankly, I can’t keep devoting valuable brainpower to saving a sport that seems unwilling to save itself.

I spitballed the Next Big Fly Fishing movie, and… nothing happened.

Now I’m saving fly fishing via the small screen, and frankly, should the industry blow this gold-plated opportunity, I’ll be foreced to simply give up trying to save fly fishing from itself.

Might just go fly fishing instead.

See you on the Channel 12, Tom Chandler.