River Porn
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

I wrote this blog for my favorite online flyfishing magazine ThisIsFly.com.

I've blogged in the past about trout porn and the Wapiti Waters blog, one of my favorite sources. Another blog I read daily is Best Flyfishing Yellowstone. The folks behind that put together a new DVD series that, I believe, created an entire new genre for fisherman's fantasies: River Porn. A company called Dry Fly Media, who are affiliated with Best Flyfishing Yellowstone, made a set of DVDs showing rivers, just beautiful trout-filled rivers, flowing by. They sent me a sample, and here's my review.

Also read it on the ThisIsFly.com blog (www.thisisfly.com/blog)


Trout porn, that is photos of big, brilliantly colored salmonids that make anglers moan, “Ooh, would you look at that beauty,” is a thriving industry. Books, DVDs, countless magazines and even more websites are dedicated to the obsession.

A series of new DVDs by a Bozeman, MT based startup called Dry Fly Media may have spurred a new visual vice for the avid flyfisher: river porn.

The DVD series, entitled “Rivers in Motion,” show scenes of fabled blue-ribbon streams in and around the flyfishing Mecca of Yellowstone Park. Unique to this video series is the cinematography, in which each DVD depicts a dozen different streamside shots . The camera is still, the river flows by, summer breezes sway streamside trees and countless bugs flash through the screen.

It’s enough to make a depraved angler moan, “Ooh, would you look at that beauty.”

The “stars” of these hour-plus films are not the trout, or the fisherpersons who pursue them, they are the rivers themselves. “The Gallatin,” one of five DVDs in the series, shows the river riffling through a canyon, running past golden, streambank grass, churning through a logjam and bouncing through pocket water.

Some of the scenes could be appreciated by anyone with a dull eye for beauty. One scene, called, “Gallatin Canyon, Late Afternoon,” depicting granite cliffs, evergreen pines, yellow sunlight and sparkling water, is so hyper pretty it’s almost not to be believed, like a gaudy nature portrait come to life. The same could be said for the scene, “Above Taylor Fork, Downstream, Evening,” which shows a broad riffle coursing past a rocky, beige cliff.

In other scenes, the beauty is more subtle and, to an avid angler, mesmerizing. “Below Greek Creek, Afternoon,” and “Near Four Corners, Upstream,” show broad, long swaths of the river. They are precisely an angler’s view, pre-cast, as he or she surveys for bugs and rising trout. In fact, was that a riser I saw near the bottom left center of the screen 19 minutes and 33 seconds in?

Rivers in Motion also feature the Madison, the Henry’s Fork of the Snake, the Yellowstone River and the Missouri.

These lovingly shot DVDs are a next-best-thing to actually being on the rivers, which was their producer’s intentions. The gorgeous scenery, combined with the way they put the brain into trout-scouting mode, make them lovely little mental getaways. These discs are perfect for a relaxing fantasy escape from winter, distance from trout streams, ugly surroundings, etc.

Rivers in Motion make the viewer yearn to be inside the scenes onscreen. Just like any good porn.

Online at: http://www.dryflymedia.com/pages/products.html

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